A UNIVERSITY student alleged before a York jury that a nightclubber raped her within hours of them meeting for the first time.

The 20-year-old woman said that she and Damien Robertson, 21, probably left York's Gallery nightclub hand-in-hand in the early hours of October 30 and that she was happy for him to escort her home in a taxi.

She did not expect him to come into the student house where she was living. But he did, telling her he took drugs and was "not a nice person" when sober.

"He didn't look like he did in the club. I noticed that his eyes looked dark," the woman said in the witness box at York Crown Court.

The student alleged that Robertson made her go backwards into her bedroom, took her trousers and underwear off, and raped her.

Robertson, of Acomb Road, York, denies rape.

The court heard that Robertson told police that the student had consented to sex. He also said he had been drinking that evening.

A housemate of the woman alleged that, when he arrived home in response to a phone call from her, she was sitting in a corner of her bedroom hugging a cushion and crying so hard he couldn't get any sense out of her. So he phoned two of her girl friends.

They alleged they were asleep in bed when he rang, but they went straight round to the woman. It took them a long time to persuade her to tell them what was wrong.

The woman told the jury that she had never met Robertson before arriving at the nightclub during an evening out with about a dozen friends. She had drunk vodka mixes and a glass of wine elsewhere that evening.

She said they had chatted and danced together for the rest of the two hours or so they spent at the nightclub, though apart from a moment when they were moving between two dance floors, she was always near friends.

She claimed that Robertson offered to escort her home in a taxi when she left because she was getting tired.

After the sexual encounter, she alleged that she made a phone call to get a friend to come round to the house immediately and then after Robertson left, she panicked. She tried to clean her bed with a flannel and shampoo, and showered.

The trial continues.

Updated: 11:12 Tuesday, June 10, 2003