Michael Myers accused of sexually assaulting woman with a knife

Michael Myers, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the offence, which prosecutors say happened on September 18, 2021 after the accused man and the alleged victim had been out drinking together.

Opening the case for the prosecution, barrister Tim Evans said the allegation came to light just after 1.30am when the woman arrived at Kendal Police Station. She immediately told the police officers: “He raped me with a knife.”

The blade was still inside her body, she said.

“That was indeed the position,” said Mr Evans, explaining that the “large knife” – said to have an eight-inch long blade -  had to be “surgically removed” at a hospital in Preston. The blade left a cut a few centimetres long, the jury heard.

The prosecutor said the woman would tell the jury she had arranged to meet Myers for a night out but when she phoned him he failed to answer. She believed he had been drinking in the afternoon and had fallen asleep.

They did then go out, visiting a local pub and, at the end of the night out, he invited her back to his flat “for food”, the jury heard. “She told him she wouldn’t stay for the night as she had work the next day,” said Mr Evans.

Once at his flat, she went into the living room and he into the kitchen. She then stepped out of the living area and lay down on the bed, believing the defendant was cooking in the kitchen.

Mr Evans said: “She will tell you: ‘I lay down and he came into the room and asked me to have sex. I said no; I don’t want to. I’m tired.”

The woman said she at that moment thought that she would not even bother to share supper with Myers, of Windermere Road, Kendal, because she thought he would be “in a bad mood” because she had refused to have sex.

She then heard him in the kitchen, thinking nothing untoward was happening and that he was making food. “He then came into the bedroom with a large knife in his hands, the blade being seven or eight inches long," she told police.

The woman added: “What he said to me was the most chilling thing I have ever heard. He said: ‘If you won’t have sex with me, see how you like having sex with this.’”

It was at that moment, the woman said, that Myers sexually assaulted her with the knife. Afterwards, she said, he had lain down on the bed and appeared to go to sleep.”

Mr Evans said the woman believed adrenaline had kicked in as she crawled down the two steps to the lounge and then to the outside door.  Doubled over, she had tried to walk along Windermere Road.

“I was half crouching, half walking,” said the woman.

She tried to flag down cars but none stopped, the woman speculating that passing motorists probably thought she was drunk. A taxi did eventually pull over and the driver told her he would alert officers at Kendal Police Station,  a short distance away.

“There is no excuse for doing what she said happened to her,” said Mr Evans. The court heard that when police interviewed Myers, he denied the assault and said he had no memory from the point he arrived home.

He told officers: “I’m saying it doesn’t make sense. If I have done this, I want hanging. I don’t believe I done it.” When shown the knife by the police, said Mr Evans, he said he could not see it properly and could not confirm that it was his because he did not have his glasses.

Warning jurors to put aside emotion and urging them to be led by the evidence, Mr Evans said they would have to consider competing scenarios. One was that the assault had been carried out by a “mystery third party.”

Another was that the woman used the knife on herself. “Of course, the question is why would anybody want to do that?” said Mr Evans, calling what happened an “extreme step.” “Someone in this courtroom when they give evidence is going to be telling lies,” said Mr Evans.

The explanation for what happened, said Mr Evans, was that the woman was telling the truth and he had done this terrible thing to her.

The trial continues.