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The firefighter was visiting Boston for the St. Patrick’s Day parade when he allegedly raped a woman while she slept. A retrial is scheduled for October.
After four days of jury deliberations, the case against the Irish firefighter accused of raping a woman at a downtown Boston hotel was declared a mistrial.
Terence Crosbie, 38, was accused of raping a woman, a stranger, while she was asleep in a Boston hotel on March 15, 2024. The judge declared a mistrial Friday, and the new trial is set for Oct. 14, a spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney said.
Crosbie was visiting Boston with fellow members of the Dublin Fire Brigade to walk in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, according to court records. His passport was revoked, and he has been ordered to remain in Massachusetts, according to the court docket in Suffolk Superior Court.
Crosbie’s lawyer Daniel Reilly did not return a request for comment.
What do prosecutors allege happened?
Last year, a then-28-year-old woman told police that she met an Irish man named Liam O’Brien, a colleague of Crosbie, while she was out to dinner, according to prosecutors. The men were sharing a hotel room at the Omni Parker House, the Suffolk DA wrote.
The woman then went to O’Brien’s hotel room around 11:30 p.m., and “eventually fell asleep in separate beds,” prosecutors wrote. Then, around 1:55 a.m., Crosbie entered the room with his key card. He had left the room around 11:30 and “remained elsewhere within the hotel” before returning to the room, according to prosecutors.
The woman woke up to him raping her vaginally with his penis, the statement of facts allege.
“She asked what he was doing and told him to stop, but he continued and made comments to the effect of, ‘I know you want this, but he fell asleep,’ in reference to Mr. O’Brien, and that since Mr. O’Brien couldn’t do it for her, he was going to,” the statement of facts said.
The woman then attempted to get dressed and leave the hotel room, with Crosbie allegedly insisting that “she ‘wanted this,’” prosecutors wrote. She left the hotel room around 20 minutes after Crosbie entered and immediately messaged a friend that she had been sexually assaulted, according to court documents.
When interviewed by police, Crosbie acknowledged that he entered the room but denied interacting with the woman, saying he was only in the room for one to two minutes, prosecutors said. His statement is contrary to the 20 minutes noted from the hotel’s lock system and video evidence, the court documents allege.
When interviewed on March 16, Crosbie told police that he was returning to Ireland on March 19. He then booked a flight back to Ireland for March 16 on a different airline, which was scheduled for 10:10 p.m. “but once at Logan Airport he boarded an even earlier flight around 7:00 p.m. He was removed from the plane and arrested,” prosecutors reported to the court.
Trial declared a mistrial, retrial scheduled for October
Crosbie, who was required to surrender his passport and remain in Massachusetts, pleaded not guilty to rape in June 2024. Evidence filed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts included his plane tickets, BPD Crime Laboratory DNA Comparison Report, and the hotel room lock reads, according to court records.
The experts identified two men’s DNA on the woman’s genital swab, according to The Boston Globe’s report of the testimony, but the amount was too small to compare to a person’s genetic profile. A doctor also testified to a “tear” in the woman’s vaginal area, the Globe reported.
In her testimony, the woman said she had consensual sex with O’Brien, then fell asleep, the Globe reported.
“I woke up, and a guy was inside of me,” the woman testified, crying as she read a text message she sent to a friend shortly after the alleged attack, per the Globe.
The DA’s spokesperson declined to comment specifically on the case against Crosbie, but said “overcoming the reasonable-doubt standard in rape cases is inherently difficult, in large part due to victim bias.”
“Some jurors make judgments of rape victims, consciously or not, that they may not make of, say, burglary victims or shooting victims,” spokesperson James Borghesani said. “They may judge what victims did before, during or after a rape through the bias of their own perception of sexual situations. This presents distortion because rapes are not sexual situations. They are predatory situations.”
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