Keith William Marshall pleads not guilty to rape and indecent treatment of a child under 16
A 12-year-old girl was at a sleepover at a friend’s house in Cairns when something happened that “changed her life and who she was, forever”, a jury has heard.
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A 62-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to rape and indecent treatment of a child under 16 in Cairns District Court.
The trial of Keith William Marshall, 62, kicked off with a jury being empanelled on Monday but then stalled on Tuesday with Mr Marshall not present, and resumed on Wednesday with Mr Marshall back in the dock.
Prosecutor Rachel Boivin told the jury the 12-year-old girl was at a sleepover at a friend’s house in Cairns on May 1, 2020, when something happened that “changed her life and who she was, forever”.
She said the girl woke before 6am and Mr Marshall called her into the living room, asking her to sit on his lap in a recliner chair and telling her he loved her.
His wife had gone to work, Ms Boivin said.
She said a video of a police interview with the girl would be played to the court.
“She will say that this was not unusual, sitting on his lap, he wanted her to do that all the time … he’d always been touchy with her,” Ms Boivin said.
She told the jury the girl recalled Mr Marshall licking her ears, holding her hand and slapping her bottom over some years and because she was so young, she thought nothing of it.
“But it demonstrated that Mr Marshall had a sexual interest in (her), a sexual interest he was willing to act upon, and in fact did act upon,” Ms Boivin said.
The court heard the girl told police Mr Marshall started kissing and licking her ear and said things like “you know I love you, right”.
Ms Boivin told the jury the girl described Mr Marshall trying to pull her sweatpants down and she asked him what he was doing.
The girl told police Mr Marshall told her not to tell his wife or anyone else “because he wanted to do more with her”, Ms Boivin said.
“And then as she walked away from him, he smacked her on the bottom playfully and joked about it,” she said.
The girl told her friends what had allegedly happened and they encouraged her to tell her mother, Ms Boivin told the court.
Mr Marshall denied the allegations when interviewed by police but Ms Boivin said there were parallels between what he reported and what the girl said happened.
“What the Crown will ask you to do when you go to deliberate upon your verdicts, is to accept the evidence of (the girl) in its entirety, that you’ll accept what (she) says happened as the truth, because she’s the only one who can say what happened to her on that morning on that recliner by the defendant,” Ms Boivin told the jury.
The court will hear evidence from witnesses including Cairns Police child protection investigation unit officers Detective Senior Constable Simon Kampman, Detective Sergeant Mark Bamford and Detective Senior Constable Wendy Macrae, as the trial before Judge Tracy Fantin continues.
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Originally published as Keith William Marshall pleads not guilty to rape and indecent treatment of a child under 16
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