A MAN accused of raping a young woman in a dark tunnel "laughed with his friend" after the attack, a court heard.

Goran Husseini denied “pestering” the complainant for sex and raping her in the early hours of the morning after she refused to sleep with him.

Day one: 'I want to sex you' - Man accused of raping lone woman in dark tunnel

The 36-year-old, from Colville Street, Middlesbrough, was in Stockton visiting a friend in February this year when he found the alleged victim wandering the streets on her own after she lost a friend on a night out.

He is accused of attacking her in a tunnel close to Victoria Bridge in Thornaby which left the woman with a bloodied nose and laughing on the phone with a friend just minutes later.

But Teesside Crown Court heard the woman consented to the sex, asked Husseini for condoms and tried to steal £60 from his jacket after sleeping with him.

The complainant who gave evidence behind a screen said she met him while she was walking home to her partner's house in Thornaby after she lost her friend on a night out.

She said: “He was trying to get me to go to a house in Stockton. He said ‘I want to sex you’ several times. He kept trying to kiss me and I kept stepping back.

“It was very dark. He started kissing me on my mouth, I wasn’t kissing him back. He kept saying ‘I want to sex you’ but I said ‘no’. I remember feeling his stubble.

“I banged my nose of the wall, he turned me around and pushed me to the wall. He put his hand in my pants and turned me around, he put his fingers down the front of my pants. I was tell him to get off.

“I screamed in pain and I asked him why he did it. He had me pressed against the wall and I was just crying.”

She added that he called her a “naughty girl” and a scuffle broke out after he realised the jacket he had lent her contained his passport.

He then rang a friend who he “spoke to in a foreign language and they were laughing”.

Keith Harrison, defending, said the alleged victim voluntarily went into the tunnel for consensual sex but “immediately regretted” it because there would be difficult questions from her partner - who is a woman.

During cross-examination he said: “You understood what he meant [by wanting to have sex] and that he was interested in you in a sexual way.

“But you continued with him along the way to the bridge, walk over the bridge with him, and you waited with him for a while before running off.

“You must have thought he was giving you cigarettes because he was interested in you.

“Do you not think it was a dangerous thing to do, to go down to the tunnel with a man who was pestering you for sex?

“You had consensual sex and regretted it immediately after because there would be consequences.

“There was a time when you hugged him. I suggest you went into the tunnel for sexual purposes. You asked him if he had a condom, you asked him this twice.”

Mr Harrison, who pointed out that the alleged victim had previously been in a relationship with a man, said she tried to steal £60 from Husseini and joked about being underaged.

He said: “You told him you were 12-years-old and he tried to give you his phone to ring the police. He was devastated and shocked. Then you said you were joking and you were in fact 18.”

But the complainant said the claim was “made up”, that the attack left her with a bloodied nose and denied consenting to the sex.

The trial continues.