Senior Qld cop on trial for alleged post-Christmas party rape 25 years ago

A senior Queensland police officer is standing trial accused of a historic rape after a Christmas party 25 years ago.

Anthony John Clowes leaves Brisbane Supreme Court. Picture: Liam Kidston

A senior Queensland police officer is standing trial accused of a historic rape after a Central Queensland Christmas party, with the alleged victim claiming she woke up to feel him raping her.

In her opening address in Brisbane District Court on Monday, prosecutor Sarah McFarland told the jury Inspector Anthony John Clowes, 54, had been a detective in the Gladstone Criminal Investigation Branch in December 1999 when the crime allegedly occurred.

Ms McFarland said a number of police officers who were stationed at Gladstone in 1999 would be called as witnesses at the trial before Judge John Allen KC, which is expected to run for five days.

The alleged victim did not make an official police report about the alleged rape until 2021, the jury heard.

Ms McFarland said that the alleged victim would tell the jury in her evidence that she went to sleep after the party fully clothed in her bed, but woke the next morning to feel a hand lying across her chest and someone thrusting into her genitals from behind.

“She screamed ‘f---’ and jumped out of the bed, she ran from her bedroom to the bathroom and closed the door,” Ms McFarland told the jury.

“The defendant followed her and tried to talk to her through the bathroom door.

“She went back to her room, grabbed some clothes and went back to the bathroom and had a shower.”

The alleged victim got dressed for work and when she came out to the lounge room Clowes was chatting to another man as if nothing had happened, Ms McFarland told the jury.

The jury was then told that Clowes and the woman grabbed something to eat before Clowes went to work.

The woman later drove to Brisbane and on the way vomited several times because she was “beside herself”, the court was told.

She called a friend and partially disclosed what had just happened with Clowes, but struggled to recall some events after this, Ms McFarland said.

The woman allegedly recalls speaking to Detective Sergeant Ray Rohweder on the phone in Brisbane, with the conversation starting calmly but escalating to her screaming at him that Clowes had raped her.

“She will give evidence as to why she did not report this and then why she did in 2021,” Ms McFarland said.

Ms McFarland said the woman took part in a pretext phone call with police to Clowes where she put to him that he raped her.

The call would be played to the jury later in the trial, she said.

“There will be officers from the Queensland Police Service who were stationed at Gladstone at the time of the incident and who were present at the Christmas party,” Ms McFarland said of witnesses who would be called.

Anthony John Clowes was a detective with Gladstone police at the time of the alleged offence.

The alleged victim’s friends, colleagues and family would also give evidence about what she had told them about the alleged rape.

In a short opening address, defence counsel Saul Holt KC said Clowes denied the charge of rape.

“You are being asked to reconstruct events from a single drunken night 25 years ago,” he said.

“He is a lifetime police officer and currently holds the rank of inspector as a commissioned officer in the Queensland Police Service.”

Mr Holt asked the jury to pay attention to the recording of the October 2021 pretext call, because his client responded with the truth.

“It will allow you to conclude that there was a drunken moment, short episode of sexual contact, between the two of them on the night of a Christmas party in Gladstone in December 1999, in her room in her house,” Mr Holt told the jury.

“But you will also be able to conclude there was no sexual intercourse at all.

“You will also conclude that it was consensual what occurred to the extent that it did, and that she was not asleep, and that it ended before anything significant happened.”

Mr Holt submitted that Clowes had been patient and kind during the pretext call, which he took while driving his car.

“When she claims to him that she woke to him having sex with her from behind, you will hear him stunned and you will hear him deny it,” Mr Holt said.

“You will immediately hear him say, ‘No, that is not what happened,’ ” Mr Holt said.

Mr Holt said the woman’s brother would tell the jury in later evidence that she earlier told him she was penetrated by Clowes’ fingers, which differed from her official complaint.

Mr Holt told the jury that they may never know why the woman had come forward 22 years after the event and “wrongly claim she was raped”.

“She had then, and has continued to have, significant alcohol abuse issues and mental health struggles,” he said.

Mr Holt said the victim had complained to Queensland Police Service of “something like sexual harassment or sexually inappropriate behaviour” to Detective Sergeant Ray Rohweder within months of 1999, but this was not an allegation of rape.

“You will hear that that mediation process was not available for an allegation of criminal offending,” Mr Holt said.

“There are very few records available,” he said of records kept in 1999.

“You will hear from witness after witness after witness that unsurprisingly they just can’t remember stuff because of the passage of time.”

The trial continues.