The victim of an alleged rape told a jury her attacker made her don sunglasses and drive him to an ATM in the middle of the night to withdraw $1,000.

The woman said the assailant — who she claims broke into her home and raped her — became remorseful, telling her: “‘I don’t know why I’m a bad person, why I’ve done this to such a nice lady.”

In further evidence to Supreme Court yesterday, she recalled a moment during her estimated two to three hour ordeal when she thought a car contained Police officers coming to her rescue — only to see it drive away.

The trial of the man accused of the crimes opened on Monday with Senior Crown counsel Paula Tyndale alleging that after the burglary and sex attack in the early hours of November 12 2006, he held the woman captive and stole $60 from her purse.

He is then accused of committing the ATM robbery. Neither the 54-year-old defendant, of no fixed address, nor the woman can be identified for legal reasons. The man denies charges of aggravated burglary and serious sexual assault causing bodily harm — both while armed with a knife — robbery, and deprivation of liberty. The woman gave evidence on Monday that she woke in the early hours of the morning to see a knife-wielding intruder in her bedroom, who threatened to kill her before raping her in her bed and making her shower afterwards. She also told the court the attacker — who carried a knife she estimated was seven to eight inches long — warned he would kill her if she looked at him.

Continuing her testimony yesterday, the victim said after this he took her out of her house and told her to get into the driver’s seat of her car while he took the passenger’s seat.

She told the court she was too frightened to try to escape and did not believe she could get away.

But then, she said, she heard the man swear and say: “I’ve cut myself with my own knife” and start to laugh. She said she offered for him to get a Band Aid from the house, hoping this would give her chance to run away — but he declined.

Next, she said, he told her to put sunglasses on and drive to an ATM, having warned: “I will have to knife you if you see me.” But, she said, he became remorseful as she drove to the bank.

“He was starting to say things like ‘I don’t know why I’m a bad person, why I’ve done this to such a nice lady,” she said.

“He then went on to say that he had been hooked on drugs...when he was 13 and that he had been a drug addict for 35 years.

:I found that really appalling and said to him ‘I can’t believe anyone doing that to a child’. He was remorseful, obviously getting quite upset, and I said to him ‘ you have to get help’.”

Her voice cracking with emotion the woman told the court she handed over $1,000 from the ATM and as they drove away, saw a car coming — the first vehicle she had seen.

By now sobbing, she told the jury: “I actually think to myself ‘it’s the Police and they’ve seen me.

“There’s a camera around the ATM, they’ve seen something wrong and they’re coming to save me. Thank God!’”

However, the car later turned off the road and left. Having driven the man back to her house, the woman said he became threatening again and said: “Of course you are going to go to the Police but would you please not go for an hour to allow me to get away?”

But after he walked off she told the jury she drove “like a bat out of hell” to Hamilton Police station.

Asked by Ms Tyndale how she felt after getting away, the victim replied: “I was very relieved to be alive. Very very relieved.”

The prosecutor asked if she knew the defendant personally, and she replied that she did not.

Larry Scott, lawyer for the accused man, put his client’s version of events to the woman — that she collected him from the Ducking Stool area of Pembroke on the evening in question, took him to her home to repair a window, offered him wine, and had consensual sex with him.

She said all of this was untrue.

She denied further claims by Mr. Scott that she offered to get the man money so he could buy drugs.

After the woman concluded her evidence, the jury heard from DNA analysis expert Candy Zuleger.

She explained that samples of DNA — genetic material that can identify people — were taken from the victim and the accused man. Ms Zuleger said a sample from the woman’s vagina had semen in it that was an identical match with the accused man’s DNA profile.

Asked for the significance of this, Ms Zuleger said although Bermuda does not have a DNA database, statistics show such a match would occur in one person out of every 320 billion based on the US African-American population, and one in 46 billion of the US Caucasian population.

The case continues.

Alleged rape victim: I was forced to hand over $1,000 from ATM