A DOCK worker accused of taking part in the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in the early hours of New Year’s Day has denied he and his friends raped her “as a pack.”

Giving evidence at Ipswich Crown Court Arturas Bagdziunas, 28, claimed that after meeting the teenager on Felixstowe seafront she had agreed to return with him and some of his friends to a house in the town’s Holland Road.

He claimed she had not appeared to be drunk and at the house she had flirted with him and his friends.

Bagdziunas, who gave his evidence through a Lithuanian interpreter, said he had asked the girl if she wanted to have sex with any of them and she had said “yes” and had chosen him and two of the other men.

He said there had been nothing to stop the girl from leaving the house and he denied she had been forced into a bedroom.

Bagdziunas, who is married with a young child, said the girl had removed her lower clothing and had initiated oral sex on him. At no time had she been crying or saying “stop.”

She had then sat on him while she had oral sex with one of his friends.

He said he was aware that what was going on was being recorded on a mobile telephone but he denied this was part of an arrangement between him and his friends.

He had gone downstairs when he had finished having sex with the girl and she had come down a few minutes later.

He said the girl had not been upset and had not seemed in a hurry to leave the house.

Bagdziunas, of Leeward Court, Felixstowe, Minddaugas Mickevicius, 31, of Holland Road, Felixstowe, Alvaras Urbonas, 25, formerly of Beach Road West, Felixstowe, and Edgaras Sliburis, 19, of Scotland, have each denied three charges of rape.

It has been alleged that after returning to the Holland Road house with the men the girl became scared and asked to use the toilet so she could make a phone call.

Bagdziunas allegedly followed her upstairs and pushed her into a bedroom where she was allegedly raped and forced to perform oral sex on the defendants.

Cross-examined by prosecution counsel Matthew McNiff, Bagdziunas denied a suggestion that he and his friends had “overpowered a vulnerable young girl and had raped her as a pack.”

He accepted that he had gone to Manchester for four months following the alleged rape and had left behind his job, his wife and his child.

However, he denied that he had fled because he had been one of the prime movers in what allegedly happened to the girl.

The trial continues.