THE ex-partner of a York woman has told a jury how she sobbed down the phone to him within minutes of allegedly being raped.

And the woman's mother told the York Crown Court jury how she found her daughter shortly afterwards sitting in water in a bath with her dressing gown on.

"I asked her what had happened and she just would not tell me," said the mother.

"Normally she discusses her problems with me."

The 27-year-old woman has given evidence that Phillip James Nicholas, 19, raped her on the ground outside her house shortly before she rang her ex-partner and her mother arrived at her home.

"It was horrible," she said in the witness box of the sexual encounter. "Because I didn't want it."

Nicholas, of no fixed address, denies rape. He claims she consented to sex and had been flirting with him as she walked home. She denies both allegations.

Her ex-partner gave evidence that she rang him around 12.40am on July 8 crying and sobbing.

She asked him to come round, then the phone went dead.

When he reached her home about five minutes later, she came out of the bathroom and "just collapsed in a ball", he told the jury.

"I reached out with my arm to try and comfort her and she cringed, so I, like, I moved back away and sat on the top step away from her."

He added: "At that stage I wasn't aware of what had happened. It was just like seeing something on television."

He added that the woman was not behaving as she usually did.

The court heard the couple have been separated for six years but remain on good terms.

The ex-partner called the woman's mother and the police.

The mother told the jury she noticed what appeared to be a love-bite on her daughter's neck.

The alleged victim has said she does not know how she got it, but she did not have it before she went to the pub that evening.

The trial continues.

Updated: 10:41 Thursday, January 10, 2002