Submariner accused of raping colleague at Faslane claims she invited him to cabin

A submariner accused of raping a colleague too drunk to consent has claimed the woman invited him to her cabin to have sex.

Jake Wilson, 38, said his co-worker, who was “a bit giggly” after a ten-hour party, grabbed hold of him and kissed him.

The petty officer told a jury that the female had not said no or tried to push him off, as she claimed, and had been awake and fully capable of consenting throughout on May 11, 2023.

He said the colleague he had sex with had been “in a jovial mood” at a drunken party which started on a nuclear submarine at Faslane naval base on the Gare Loch and continued in one of the bars on the base.

He said they had been play-fighting, and she had repeatedly ended up on the floor because she rugby tackled him and tried to grab his genitals, not because she was too drunk to stand.

Giving evidence in his own defence, the father-of-three told the jury: “We’d had a good drink. I understood what she was saying. She was clear.

“She said, ‘Fancy coming back to my cabin tonight?’ Initially, I said, ‘Are you joking?’ That’s just frowned upon.”

He went on: “I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and she said, ‘Yes I am’.

“Maybe for my own ego side of it, I thought, how did I manage to do this?”

The weapons engineer on Astute Class nuclear attack submarines claimed the female submariner was waiting for him when he went to her door a few minutes later.

Asked if he thought at that stage that she was able to give consent, he replied: “Yes, certainly. It had been arranged earlier. Yes, she could give consent.”

Advocate depute Leanne Cross put to him: “You found her lying unconscious and you took advantage of her. Didn’t you?”

Wilson replied: “No, I didn’t.”

In addition to the rape charge, Wilson is accused of sexually assaulting a second submariner on various occasions between October 1, 2021 and November 3, 2022.

In response to his claim that the women were both “completely mistaken” in the evidence they gave, the advocate depute suggested: “The alternative explanation is that they’re telling the truth and you’re the one who’s not telling the truth.”

He replied: “No.”

However, he admitted that he had lied to his wife about the affair.

A former female Navy colleague told how she got a phone call from her friend between 7 and 8am the day of the alleged rape.

She said: “It was immediately obvious she was upset. It was very clear that something bad had happened, that someone had been in her room and she knew who it was.

“It was very clear that she’d been sexually assaulted or raped.”

Dr Susan Schofield, 54, a GP in the Navy’s medical centre at HMS Neptune, Faslane, described the woman as “dishevelled and quite distraught” when she saw her at 8.30am.

She said the patient had stated that she’d been “subjected to a sexual assault last night”.

Petty officer Harley Fraser, 21, a Royal Navy Police officer, said the woman was crying, shaking and stopping every now and then to vomit.

She said: “She was clearly very, very upset. She was honestly traumatised. It wasn’t just shaking, it was like convulsing.”

She said the woman was taken by a friend to the Sexual Assault Response Coordination Service (SARCS) in Glasgow, where Police Scotland became involved.

The trial before temporary Judge John Morris continues.