Rape accuser treated as object, Lovett trial told

Andrew Lovett treated the woman who has accused him of rape like an object and a commodity, the prosecutor in his rape trial has said.
Michael Tovey, QC told the County Court jury in his closing address this morning, that Lovett had been inconsistent in his versions of events of what happened in the early hours of December 24, 2009.
Lovett has pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape.

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The jury has heard that he and then St Kilda teammate Jason Gram met the complainant and her friend while out in Richmond the night before, and the four went back to Gram's Port Melbourne apartment.
Mr Tovey said it was “wildly illogical” for the defence to have suggested that the woman was racist because she had called Lovett “a black bastard” shortly after she left the apartment.
Mr Tovey said the defence theory that the woman hated Aboriginal men but voluntarily and enthusiastically had sex with one and then decided to complain of rape was ridiculous.
He said that if that theory was the case then why did the woman draw attention to the fact that she had had sex with an Aboriginal man.
He said that at the time the woman was feeling “abject humiliation, degradation and despair”.
Mr Tovey said Lovett felt a sense of entitlement to have sex with the woman and was not going to take “no” for an answer.
“He felt entitled to treat (the woman) as a commodity, an object, a vehicle for his own sexual pleasure,” he said.
Mr Tovey said the “unchallenged facts of the case speak for themselves.”
Defence counsel David Grace, QC said the complainant was an entirely unreliable witness because of her poor recollections.
He described her evidence of trying to find her mobile phone while having sex with Lovett as “preposterous”.
He said the woman’s text for help to her ex-boyfriend occurred when she was lying in the hallway of the apartment, not when she was lying on the bed.
“(She) is a most unreliable witness,” Mr Grace said.“Her lack of memory and what you might conclude is her selective avoidance of propositions may indicate unreliability,” Mr Grace said.
Mr Grace said that the woman said that many of the things that she was observed to do on the night, including kissing Jason Gram several times, were unusual for her to have done.
He said that having sex with Lovett may have been another thing that was unusual for her to do.
Mr Grace’s address continues, as does the trial before Judge Meryl Sexton.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/rape-accuser-treated-as-object-lovett-trial-told-20110720-1ho44.html#ixzz1SchzK5aw