Jury to consider doctored Uber receipt in rape trial of high-profile Melbourne man
A jury has been asked to consider why a high-profile man lied and doctored a Uber receipt as they deliberate on two rape allegations.
A series of lies and a doctored Uber receipt sit at the centre of a rape trial involving a high-profile Melbourne man, a jury has been told.
The man, who cannot be identified because of a suppression order, is facing trial in the County Court over allegations he twice digitally raped a woman in January last year.
He has pleaded not guilty, with his legal team suggesting the woman is mistaken about who carried out the alleged acts.
On Tuesday, jurors heard closing addresses from Crown prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams and defence barrister David Hallowes SC.
Judge Gregory Lyon is expected to deliver his charge and summary of the case before the jury is sent out to deliberate on Wednesday.
Prosecutors allege the accused man snuck into a spare bedroom at his parents’ home, pretending to be someone else when he sexually assaulted the woman.
The jury heard he’d been drinking with friends since the afternoon when the woman, who was a friend of his girlfriend, arrived in an Uber at 12.23am.
At this stage there were four people in the house; the accused man, his girlfriend, the alleged victim and a second man, a friend of the accused with whom the woman had previously had a casual sexual relationship.
After some time spent socialising, the woman and the second man had consensual sexual activity in a guest bedroom at the home.
Mr McWilliams told the jury the second man left the home in an Uber at 1.58am, with this man giving evidence he’d “only left the room the one time”.
“17 minutes pass between (the second man) being collected by the Uber and being taken home and (the woman) sending a message to him on Instagram asking ‘are you still here?’ and ‘when did you leave?’,” he said.
It’s alleged during this window of time, the accused man opened the door to the guest bedroom and told the woman the second man’s Uber had cancelled and he was going to come back upstairs.
A short time later, it’s alleged the accused man returned and climbed into bed with the woman in the darkly-lit room, inserting his fingers into her vagina.
Mr McWilliams said the woman had given evidence she’d said stop and wriggled away, before becoming suspicious it was the accused man and not the second man.
He told the jury she questioned who it was and was told it was the second man, before she was allegedly penetrated again.
The prosecutor said the woman gave evidence she recognised the accused’s voice and felt his hair.
“She said ‘(accused man) I know it’s you’,” Mr McWilliams said.
It’s alleged he then stopped and “ran from the room”, with the woman recognising it as the accused man due to a light coming from elsewhere in the home.
Taking to the witness box on Monday, the accused man repeatedly denied that this was him.
“I never went into that room and did those things,” he said.
The woman ordered an Uber at 2.24am and left the home at 2.31am.
Mr McWilliams argued the woman’s account of what happened has been “consistent, cogent and compelling” from moments after leaving the home when she began to contact friends and family to sitting in the witness box during the trial almost two years later.
“She’s not mistaken, she's not confused, she’s told you what happened; she was raped by (the accused man),” he said.
In the days that followed, Mr McWilliams said the accused man began telling a “convoluted, complex series of lies”, the majority of which he now admitted.
These included doctoring an Uber receipt to falsely show the second man had left the home later that night after the alleged victim left.
The second man also gave evidence the accused had told him to tell the accused man’s girlfriend; “I left at a time later than I actually did”, Mr McWilliams said.
In a recorded phone call between the accused man and the woman days later, he falsely told her the second man had confirmed it was him that entered the room.
Mr McWilliams said the accused engaged in “persistent urging” for the woman to not take the matters further, move on and not make it a bigger thing.
“The purpose for saying those things, the purpose for asking (the second man) to lie for him in that way is because he knew that after (the second man) left it was only him left in the house,” he said.
“The truth was that it was him. He knew the truth would implicate him.”
Mr McWilliams asked the jury to find the accused man’s stated reasons for this — that he panicked and his girlfriend was stressed by the allegations — was “wholly unsatisfactory”.
In response, Mr Hallowes, for the defence, said these lies were “stupid” and “idiotic” but did not prove his guilt.
Mr Hallowes asked the jury to accept his client panicked and embarked on this one continuing lie after being confronted with a shock accusation of which he was innocent.
“This is a young man confronting a shocking allegation … and he does the wrong thing,” he said.
“It’s a lie, it’s a stupid lie but it’s not a lie that shows he’s guilty.”
Mr Hallowes told the jury that something clearly “went wrong” in the guest bedroom and that the woman wasn’t consenting but that his client was not involved.
He raised evidence from the days after the alleged rape that showed the woman held “at least some uncertainty” as to who was responsible.
This included messages to the accused and the second man, asking “who the f--k wants to come clean?” and comments made during the recorded phone call with the accused man
“I’m still just trying to wrap my head around it but who knows what happened,” he said, quoting the woman.
“At the end of the day it was you or (the second man) but someone sexually assaulted me.”
Mr Hallowes said the accused man’s girlfriend was in a nearby bedroom and recalled waking up when the accused man left to let the second man out.
She gave evidence she remained awake until he returned and didn’t hear any noises, with the defence barrister questioning how all the alleged events could have taken place in 17 minutes.
Mr Hallowes also said both the accused man and his girlfriend had given evidence they’d been woken up by the second man at some point asking for a condom.
The woman and the second man, the jury heard, both denied that the second man went looking for a condom.
Mr Hallowes argued this was “powerful support” for the proposition that the accused man had left the room more than the one time when he was leaving the home.
“This prosecution contention that he only left once starts to crumble,” the barrister said.
Mr Hallowes told the jury if there was some reasonable possibility that his client was telling the truth then they’d have to find him not guilty.
“You don’t decide this case on a gut feel, you decide it on the evidence,” he argued.
“When you consider the hurdles I was talking about … I suggest you wouldn’t come anywhere close to being satisfied of (the accused man’s) guilt.”
The trial continues.
Originally published as Jury to consider doctored Uber receipt in rape trial of high-profile Melbourne man
