Girls at footballers’ hotels just there for sex, Sunderland star Titus Bramble tells Leeds rape jury

PREMIER League footballer Titus Bramble told his brother’s rape trial in Leeds today that girls who go to footballers’ hotels after nights out were there for sex.

The Sunderland defender was giving evidence at the trial of his brother Tesfaye Bramble, 30, at Leeds Crown Court.

Tesfaye Bramble - who played for Southend United, Stockport County and Stevenage before his career was ended by injury - is accused of raping a 19-year-old woman in the Vermont Hotel, in Newcastle, following a night out.

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Titus Bramble told the court how his party had gone to a bar in Newcastle called Madame Koo’s after a Sunderland match on September 22, last year.

He said he returned to the hotel later and found his brother, two of their friends and the alleged victim in one of the rooms he had booked.

Mr Bramble was asked by Penelope Moreland, prosecuting, whether he “assumed she (the woman) had come back to the hotel for sex”.

The footballer said “yes”.

He explained how he had been going out in Newcastle for years and “nearly every time a girl came back to the hotel it was for sex”.

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Mr Bramble admitted he was wrong to assume that any woman who came back to a hotel with footballers was there for sex.

He said: “People do make assumptions. I’m no different.

“I shouldn’t, but I do.”

Pressed by Miss Moreland, he said: “I assume that when a girl’s coming back to a hotel after the club it’s for sex.”

He also agreed he had heated discussion with the alleged victim in the hotel room in which he defended footballers when she was generalising about their arrogance.

Mr Bramble agreed that the woman was talking to him about how it was wrong that footballers cheated on their wives and girlfriends.

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He said she told him she thought footballers were “big time” and he thought it was because they had things she did not have.

Mr Bramble said he told her he had a Rolex watch, a Range Rover and a house abroad.

He also agreed he told police he thought the woman was a “tramp”.

But he said this was because of the scruffy, casual clothes she was wearing.