A jury has found a man guilty of raping a minor at her home in February 2023, rejecting his account that he never had physical contact with her and that she fabricated the allegation to shift blame away from a young man she had been involved with.

According to Wadadli Case Files, the complainant, who was 14 at the time, told the High Court that the accused was a neighbour she saw often but rarely interacted with, since she tended to stay indoors. She testified that on the day in question she was home alone waiting for dance practice when the defendant knocked on her door asking for her aunt. When she told him her aunt wasn’t home, she said, he pushed his way inside and assaulted her in her grandmother’s room, ignoring her pleas to stop. She said she was menstruating at the time and that the intercourse worsened the pain she was already experiencing.

The defence, led by attorney Sherfield Bowen, focused heavily on inconsistencies between what the complainant initially told police and the second account she gave later. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that her first statement to police described a lesser incident — that the defendant had touched her before realising she was menstruating and leaving. She agreed this account omitted what she says truly happened.

The defence suggested this discrepancy stemmed from the complainant trying to conceal an unrelated matter — that a boy, a school friend, had visited her at home that day in violation of a house rule. She acknowledged fearing punishment over the visit but firmly denied that this was the reason she changed her account, testifying that she only gave the full story once she learned she would undergo a medical examination and after speaking to her grandmother, who was the person she was comfortable confiding in. She also said her fear centred on the possibility that the defendant might return and hurt her.

In re-examination, she maintained there was nothing romantic between her and the boy, describing their time together as watching television and talking about school before he left.

After all the witnesses had given evidence, the defendant gave an unsworn statement in which he said he had gone to speak with the complainant about her wrongdoing involving a young man. He claimed that after the results of a medical examination came back, she decided to blame him instead of the young man, insisting that he had no physical contact with her at all.

The jury did not accept his account and returned a guilty verdict.