Jurors in former top cop’s rape trial set to deliberate as lawyers make final pitch
JURORS in the trial of former NT Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Bravos will begin deliberations on Wednesday
Northern Territory
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JURORS in the trial of former NT Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Bravos will begin their deliberations on Wednesday after opposing lawyers delivered their closing addresses today.
Bravos has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court to two counts of raping a fellow officer dating back to the aftermath of an alcohol-fuelled emergency services function in 2004.
The court previously heard the pair had gone back to Bravos’s house for coffee after a night of drinking before she alleged she passed out and woke to find him having sex with her.
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In his final address, Crown prosecutor Nick Papas QC reminded jurors Bravos’s barrister, John Lawrence SC, had asked the woman “What did you think you were going there for?” but said that changed nothing.
“So what?” he said.
“Even if she thought something might be happening when she got there, even if that was her state of mind — and it’s not what she says of course — there’s no implicit contract, presumption that you’re a drunken person and you’re going to go back to someone’s house (so) you must be expecting sex and that you’re consenting to it.”
Mr Papas said despite inconsistencies in some of the evidence, the woman had remained firm that she had not consented to having sex with Bravos on the night in question.
“If she was asleep or so affected by alcohol or passed out and that he knew that, saw that, she’s not consenting and he know’s she’s not consenting — ‘Oh she’s asleep, she won’t care’ — then that’s not consent, he knows it’s not consent, therefore the charge is made out,” he said.
In his own address to jurors, Mr Lawrence said “people believe things that they want to believe” and there was “a fair chance” the woman had convinced herself or been convinced that she had not consented to sex.
“Things happen in our lives and we look back on them and think something else happened, for whatever reason,” he said.
“We can do it subconsciously, we can do it consciously, we can reinvent history because it’s necessary, it avoids pain or embarrassment or marital strife, that’s what we do.”
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Mr Lawrence said it was a fact of life that people did things when intoxicated they later regretted.
“Sometimes it goes further than others, not just saying nice things which are embarrassing but doing things that are embarrassing,” he said.
“Having sex when you’re drunk with someone else and you wake up the next day and you go ‘What in God’s name allowed me to make that daft decision?’.”
Originally published as Jurors in former top cop’s rape trial set to deliberate as lawyers make final pitch