An Essex dock worker accused of raping a drunk woman told police they had consensual sex.

After his arrest Joe Jordan claimed the alleged victim was a “little bit drunk” but said “wasn’t so out of it that she couldn’t speak.”

Jordan said he’d stopped and offered to give her a lift home and in his car she had swung her legs over him and said: “Sleep with me.”

He claimed she had started touching him and performed a sex act on him.

“I wasn’t forcing it in her. If anything she was forcing it on me,” he said. ‘She was the one who wanted it.”

“She took her own shorts off. I didn’t pull them off,” he added.

Jordan said that when he took the woman home she had kissed him and told him she loved him.

He said he had helped her out of the car and had handed her handbag to her. He said she had refused to put her underwear on.

Jordan, 24, of Main Road, Harwich, has denied two offences of raping the woman on July 17 last year. It has been alleged that Jordan raped the woman in his Ford Mondeo after offering to take her home.

The court has heard that witnesses in Parkeston saw a Ford Mondeo driver pull a drunk, semi naked woman out of his car by her arms and drop her on the pavement.

“She was left lying on the ground with her skirt up revealing she had no underwear on,” said Lesley Bates, prosecuting.

“She was unable to sit up, she couldn’t speak other than to mumble and she had wet herself,” she added.

Members of the public were so concerned about her that they called an ambulance and when she was taken to hospital a blood sample blood alcohol concentration was four-and-a-half times the limit for driving.

Swabs were taken and Jordan’s semen was found on an intimate swab taken from her.

Miss Bates claimed the woman wasn’t capable of consenting to sex because of her level of intoxication.

Miss Bates told the court that on July 17 the woman, who was a binge drinker, had visited a relative and had shared a box of wine before leaving with a third of a bottle of vodka.

She had been walking home when Jordan offered her a lift home and allegedly raped her.

The trial continues.