Prosecutors say George Fay (pictured) raped a woman as she slept off a drunken tryst
The son of a British barrister accused of raping a university student as she slept ‘violated her for his own gratification’, a court heard.
George Fay, 23, was driven by a ‘desire for sex’ and tried to assault the woman ‘by stealth’, prosecutors said during closing statements.
Fay allegedly forced himself on the woman as she lay sleeping next to his best friend Jack Slye.
The woman and Slye had earlier had consensual sex, but Fay was ‘caught red handed’ when she woke up, the jury heard.
Fay’s defence lawyer denied that he was preoccupied by sex that night and said that as a ‘healthy young man he probably has sex on his mind all the time’.
London-born Fay denies rape, sex abuse and a criminal sexual act while the victim was ‘physically incapable’ of giving consent at the apartment in New York.
His father Michael is a QC who sits as a deputy high court judge in the British Virgin Islands.
The defendant and a group of friends had been out drinking on July 9 last year when Slye brought the woman back to the apartment where they had consensual sex.
Fay arrived home shortly before 4am when the student and Slye were fast asleep in Fay’s bed, the bottom rung of a bunk bed.
At the New York Supreme Court Assistant District Attorney Sara Sullivan said that Fay could have slept on one of the two couches or the top bunk, but instead he chose to get in bed with them.
She said: ‘The defendant didn’t get into bed because he thought he deserved to sleep in his own bed, he got into bed because there was and undressed sleeping girl in that bed and he wanted to touch her’.
George Fay, center in dark jacket, flanked by his parents Sofia (left) and Michael (right in brown jacket and green tie)
Sullivan said that Fay made a sexual advance on the woman while she was sleeping because he was ‘testing the waters’ and ‘seeing what he could get away with’.
When she did not wake up he carried on and began what the DA called a ‘nightmare’.
Sullivan said: ‘She wakes up and she sees a face she has never seen before. She looks next to her and sees Mr Slye sleeping and that’s when her world falls apart. Now she’s awake’
Sullivan said that the student had a good memory and been ‘consistent’ in her account.
George Fay, right with his father Michael, who happens to be a top lawyer
The only blank spot was that she did not recognise Fay – which proved she was asleep at the time he raped her.
Sullivan said that Fay lied about the attack on the night and has been lying ever since – and she dismissed his story that the student started having sex with him as ‘ridiculous’.
Fay had been staying at the apartment owned by family friends on Manhattan’s Upper East Side last summer while he did a summer internship with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.
In his closing speech his defence lawyer Stephen Saracco denied that he had a ‘sexual craving’ on the night of the incident.
Nor did not see the student as a ‘sleeping target of opportunity’.
Using an incorrect age for his client, Saracco said: ‘As a healthy 20-year-old man he probably has sex on his mind all the time.’
Addressing the jury, Saracco said: ‘Was it a poor choice for George Fay to climb into that bunk on July 9?
‘It probably was but we are not making a determination if he made poor choices or bad judgement, we are making a judgement of if he was guilty of rape’.
According to Saracco Fay’s defence witnesses described him as laid back, not violent and ‘simply not the type of person to do this’.
Saracco said that it Fay would have to be a ‘contortionist’ to have forced his penis into the student’s mouth while she was sleeping given she was in the lower bunk.
Doing so did not offer ‘much gratification and he ran the risk of getting bit’, he said.
George Fay, right, with his father Michael. Private school educated Fay was spending the summer at the Manhattan home of family friends. He’d been drinking into the early hours of the morning when the alleged attack happened
Saracco attacked the student’s testimony and said: ‘It is the defence’s contention that the woman lacks the clarity, consistency and reasonableness you you can rely on to convict the defendant of rape in the first degree’.
If there was anyone who ‘put things in motion’ it was the student by going home with Slye, he said.
Saracco said: ‘I don’t know what was going on in her head but she probably regretted what she did.’
Fay, a university dropout, was raised in the British Virgin Islands and educated at boarding schools in the US including the $58,900-a-year Avon Old Farms in Connecticut.
His father’s law practice is based on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands but he remains an honorary member of London’s Radcliffe Chambers.
Fay’s mother Sofia is a partner in a public relations company in the Caribbean.
The wealthy couple, who also have homes on Jersey in the Channel Islands and in Massachusetts, have attended court every day with Fay, who is their eldest son.
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