A STUDENT sexually assaulted a fellow student at the University of York after a night out in the city centre, York Crown Court was told.

A jury heard that Thomas Whittaker, 19, was a virgin when he allegedly attacked the female student in her room on the Heslington campus in the early hours of January 17.

Whittaker, who denies assault by penetration, said everything he did was consensual.

The complainant told police they had kissed on the dancefloor of Kuda nightclub before he told her she was drunk and he should take her home.

She told police his manner changed in her room, and he pushed her with both hands onto the bed, where she struck her head on the wall.

She said: “His hands were all over. I tried to get up but I wasn’t strong enough. He was holding my head and my earring was pulled out and was bleeding.” She said she pretended to be asleep in the hope he would lose interest and give up but when he started kissing her chest, she tried to force him off her, but she was not strong enough.

In a videoed police interview shown to the court, she said: “He kept touching me all over and I kept saying ‘no, please stop, please go away’.

“He continued and he was saying things like ‘daddy doesn’t like it’ and ‘you struggle like a naughty girl’. He was calling me naughty. Every time I tried to stop him, he was pushing me back down.”

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said Whittaker tried to remove her jeans but could not as she made it difficult for him.

She told police: “I said I would let him do anything he wanted but I needed to go to the toilet first. He said ‘you need to cover up, you look filthy. What would people say if they saw you like that, you look disgusting’."

After putting on a hooded top, she left her room and ran upstairs to knock on a friend’s door, the court heard.

A fellow student said in a statement she had run straight past him into his bedroom in tears and saying that she had said “no”. He said: “She was very frightened. She was really on edge and kept looking at the peephole and asked me to get security involved. She was very traumatised and upset.”

A college receptionist said he saw the girl crying hysterically and uncontrollably.

Whittaker, 19, a chemistry student, of Church Meadows, Barton, who wept in the witness box as he gave evidence, told the jury he was a virgin at the time.

He said he remembered the student leading him out of the club by the hand and, after returning to the university by bus, she had asked him: “My place or yours?”

He said: “I thought she was joking... I asked if she was being serious? She said ‘yes’.”

He said that when they got back to her room, she led him in by the hand and they sat on the bed and started kissing for five or 10 minutes, and then he touched, kissed and bit her breasts. “She seemed to be enjoying it,” he said.

He said he tried to undo her jeans but she said “no”, and he “respected that” and stopped.

“She was putting her fingers though my hair and moaning my name,” he added.

He said that when he was later arrested by police and interviewed, he declined to answer questions because he was “scared and confused” and was acting on a solicitor’s advice.

He said he had drunk the equivalent of 12 shots through the night but denied alcohol had increased his libido and lowered his self restraint.

Whittaker was praised in a series of character references read to the court. A teacher and tutor at his old sixth form college said he had been a “fabulous student with exemplary behaviour”, while friends described him as “selfless”, “kind”, “polite” and “respectful”.

The trial continues.