Adelaide Plains man charged with 73 counts including rape, sexual assault

A woman allegedly endured four years of brutal sexual assault at the hands of an Adelaide Plains man, including one attack at a local football grand final and another with a handgun.

A retiree allegedly handcuffed then gagged a woman with her own underwear amid a four-year period where police say he raped her on several occasions in his Adelaide Plains home, a court has heard.

The man, 71, on Thursday faced the Elizabeth Magistrates Court from custody appearing on an extensive list of charges for the first time and applying for bail.

The allegations included several instances where the alleged victim claimed the man held a knife to her throat or aimed a handgun in her direction before telling her to perform a litany of sex acts upon him.

A police prosecutor told the court the last of 73 charges arose after the man allegedly followed the woman into the women’s toilets at a local football grand final in September last year before assaulting her.

“(The man) began kissing her lips and neck and (the alleged victim) said she didn’t fight much after that because she was scared he might kill her,” he said.

An Adelaide Plains man has been charged with a slew of offences including 36 counts of rape. Picture: Facebook

“(The man then said to her) ‘now you know the rules, it’s another one of our secrets’.”

The police prosecutor told the court the man allegedly regularly threatened to kill the woman, taped her mouth shut with grey tape and would restrain her with handcuffs.

The court heard on one occasion the man allegedly sexually assaulted the woman with a handgun.

On another occasion, the prosecutor said the man allegedly choked the woman until she had to open her mouth before he orally raped her.

The sheer amount of charges, which included 36 counts of rape, saw the Department of Public Prosecutions request an eight-and-a-half-month timeframe before the matter was called before the court so they could compile the information necessary.

Hanna Rogers, for the man, told Magistrate Benjamin Sale her client would “strongly contest” the allegations and described them as “quite curious”.

“Your Honour should not be overwhelmed … by the number of charges before the court or the information because it is, at its heart, a course of conduct against one complainant – which is alleged,” she said.

“And, if anything, your Honour might find it quite curious that as at the 18th of September 2021 the complainant has been able to particularise such detailed allegations which date back to January 2017.”

Miss Rogers told the court the man claimed he had not seen the alleged victim for “three to four years” and that the allegations, given they were from one woman, did not “pose a risk to the community at large”.

Mr Sale denied bail and told the court the ageing man, if found guilty, faced the prospect of dying in jail given the “extraordinary seriousness” of the allegations.

“Given the extraordinary seriousness of these allegations, which if even one tenth were to be established beyond reasonable doubt, would see the man spend a reasonable portion, probably the rest of his life, in custody,” he said.

The man was remanded to face court in December.