Francis ‘Frank’ Crameri: jury set to deliberate in rape trial of former Maryborough teacher

A jury will be asked to decide if a respected former Maryborough teacher “turned into a sex predator”.

Francis Xavier "Frank" Crameri, 66, leaves the Melbourne County Court on the first day of his sexual assault trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

A woman who claimed she was raped by a former Maryborough teacher is “strategic witness” who “does not want to accept any responsibility” for a motel room tryst, defence lawyers have argued.

Francis Xavier “Frank” Crameri, 66, has pleaded not guilty to charges of raping and sexually assaulting the woman in a country motel in 2020.

In closing submissions to a County Court jury on Monday, Crameri’s barrister Richard Edney said the case against his client “rises and falls on whether you accept (the woman) as a witness of truth”.

Mr Edney said the woman “omitted key parts of her narrative”.

“When you omit material in any account, in any story, the true context is lost,” he said.

The trial has heard Crameri is an upstanding member of the community and with no criminal record.

Mr Edney said it was inconceivable Crameri “after six decades on this earth, turned into a sexual predator.”

“(The woman) in my submission to you, falls into the category of someone who does not want to accept any responsibility, any agency, for what happened between her and Mr Crameri,” Mr Edney said.

The prosecution alleges Crameri, without consent, sucked the woman’s nipples, briefly sexually penetrated her, and forced her to touch his genitalia while staying at a motel during a trip in regional Victoria.

Francis Xavier "Frank" Crameri, 66, leaves the Melbourne County Court on the first day of his sexual assault trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

After the woman returned home, she told a friend she had “an interesting weekend”.

“He was all over me and he wouldn’t stop,” the woman said.

Mr Edney said she gave different accounts to her friends, doctors and detectives and that her final version of events was “a recreation, a rewriting, of what went on”.

Prosecutor Fiona Martin said trauma could have an affect on peoples’ memories, but that the woman gave “explicit evidence that she did not consent to any of the sexual activity from the get-go”.

“You will readily accept that the element of lack of consent is proven in relation to all four charges,” she said.

“She does not only verbalise it, she physically resists him.”

Crameri and the woman shared a bed on the night of the alleged attack.

Ms Martin said “(the woman) was entitled to get into that bed that evening and not consent to anything”.

She said any argument about the woman being “motivated to lie” about Crameri for more than four years was “completely ridiculous”.

Ms Martin said Crameri, in an interview with detectives, remembered precise details about the trip away, down what he had for lunch, but not the night of his alleged offending.

“Mr Crameri was not being truthful in his interview,” Ms Martin said.

“I suggest to you that interview was not one of someone doing their best to recall … it was the interview of someone who was not being truthful.”

The trial, before Judge George Georgiou and a jury, continues. The jury is expected to begin deliberating on Tuesday.