Rape charge against Brisbane man Ben Alex Keating dropped
Prosecutors have dropped a rape charge against a Queensland man on the second day of his jury trial after defence lawyers raised questions about the alleged victim’s credibility.
Prosecutors have dramatically dropped a rape charge against a Queensland man on the second day of his jury trial in the District Court.
On Wednesday, Crown prosecutor Tegan Little discontinued the case against New Farm man Ben Alex Keating.
He was standing trial before Judge Philip McCarthy KC accused of raping a woman in his home as she slept on March 13, 2023, after a drunken night out in Fortitude Valley.
A court spokeswoman confirmed to The Courier-Mail that the prosecution had entered a nolle prosequi in relation to the rape charge.
The Courier-Mail can reveal details that the jury were not told about the case.
In a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, before the jury was empanelled, Mr Keating’s barrister applied seeking the court’s permission to cross-examine the alleged victim as to her credibility.
Barrister Simon Lewis, for Mr Keating, told Judge McCarthy, that he wished to quiz her about her claim that she had also been raped by another man on November 30, 2021.
“A jury might find it difficult to accept that she has been penetrated while she’s been asleep once, let alone on two separate occasions,” Mr Lewis said of the 2023 complaint and the 2021 complaint.
“And that seems to be the allegation in this case, is that she never consented and that she awoke being penetrated,” he said.
Mr Lewis told the court on Tuesday that he wished to probe the unnamed woman about whether in fact she had a consensual sexual experience with Mr Keating on March 13, 2022 but because she believed that he had given her the sexually transmitted disease herpes, she made a false allegation of rape against him.
“She has then attached what she has previously, a version of an event previously done, and marries that up?” Judge McCarthy asked, summarising Mr Lewis’s argument.
Mr Lewis said he wished to suggest to the woman that she had used the version she gave of a rape she complained of at a party in 2021 against his client.
The woman allegedly complained she passed out on a couch at a party in 2021 after taking two capsules, believing they were MDMA.
She complained she awoke to a male person penetrating her while she laying on her stomach.
“He was holding her down, she felt paralysed unable to move,” Mr Lewis said of what the woman said.
She did not pursue the 2021 rape complaint, Mr Lewis said.
He argued that the woman may have “drawn on that” experience to make her rape complaint against Mr Keating.
