Man who spent two years on remand finally acquitted on a charge of rape after Toowoomba court trial

He spent two years in jail denying he raped an 18-year-old girl, now the 23-year-old man has walked free after a jury found him not guilty. See his story here.

A 23-year-old man accused of raping a teenage woman in a southwest Queensland town has been acquitted of the charge.

The man, who is not named for legal reasons, had spent two years in jail before the matter got to trial in the Toowoomba District Court this week.

He pleaded not guilty to the charge and slumped into the dock and cried upon hearing the jury’s verdict of not guilty, prompting his solicitor Chelsea Saldumbide to hand a box of tissues over the dock wall to him.

The then 18-year-old woman had accused the defendant of raping her on the bathroom floor of a house in the town in the early hours of November 12, 2020.

The court was told the pair had engaged in consensual sex twice before some months prior to the alleged incident at the home in which at one point that night five people had been sleeping in a bed including the complainant woman and the accused man.

He told police the pair had sex in the bathroom but it had been consensual.

In his closing address to the jury, the man’s barrister Peter O’Connor submitted the woman had made the complaint because she knew the group of people all knew she had been with his client and that she didn’t want her boyfriend to find out.

There had been animosity between the woman’s boyfriend and the defendant, the court heard.

Mr O’Connor reminded the jury of the evidence of another man, a friend of the accused, who told the court he was one of the five people in the bed that night and he had felt movement, seen an “up and down” motion under the blanket and believed it was the woman performing a sexual act on his friend, the defendant.

After that the pair had got out of the bed and gone to the bathroom, he said.

The woman claimed she had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and that the man had followed her and tried to kiss her and then pushed her into the bathroom where he raped her on the floor.

However, by its verdict, the jury of seven women and five men didn’t accept her version of events and after two hours of deliberation returned a verdict of not guilty.

After two years in custody, the man was discharged by Judge David Kent KC and walked free from court.