New trial ordered on rape charge

Press, 7 December 1985, Page 8

New trial ordered on rape charge

After deliberating for more than nine hours the foreman of a jury in the High Court last evening told Mr Justice Cook that there was no prospect of a verdict being reached. His Honour remanded John Frederick King, aged 29, a sickness beneficiary, on bail for a new trial on charges of raping a woman, aged 36, and of assaulting her.

Miss E. H. B. Thompson appeared for King. The trial began on Thursday. The complainant said that she had been drinking for several hours at the Fitzgerald Arms Tavern when King joined the group she was with and asked her to go to a party at his place with him. She did not want to go but he forced her

to. When they got to his room King locked the door. He forced her to remove her clothing, struck her about the face and made her nose bleed and pushed her on to the bed where the alleged offence was committed.

In his final address Mr D. J. L. Saunders, for the Crown, said that the case against King abounded with evidence corroborating the woman’s account of what had happened. In her address to the jury Miss Thompson said that the Crown case did not contain the necessary evidence to prove both charges beyond reasonable doubt and therefore King should be acquitted on both. The Crown case was shot

full of discrepancies and was so unreliable that it P would be dangerous to convict on it The woman’s • evidence lacked credibility »' and the medical evidence went nowhere near proving -j that rape had been committed. It was only too appar- ■' ent that the Crown had ;. never got past first base, ? said Miss Thompson. ; k In cross-examination, the woman contradicted evi-dence-in-chief she had given and embellished her story, which was full of inconsistencies. There was something very phoney and con- > trived about her evidence. If she had been forced to go to ■ King’s room there had been numerous opportunities when she could have escaped from him or called for help, but she did not