Pastor not guilty of rape

Jury finds in favour of church man and against wife’s allegation

A FORMER church pastor has been found not guilty of raping his wife at their Launceston home in June last year.

A Supreme Court jury returned a majority verdict yesterday afternoon after three days of evidence, during which they heard the complainant was uncomfortable with intimacy while the devout Christian couple dealt with problems in their marriage.

Prosecutors had argued the man, in his late 60s, was controlling and abusive towards his wife, almost 40 years his junior, and that the alleged incident was a result of her resisting his dominance.

The complainant had given evidence, telling the court that her husband would often denigrate her appearance and parenting style, and that on the night in question, she had told him she did not want to have sex before he put his hands around her neck and penetrated her anyway.

However, the man told the court that he and his wife had consensual sex, despite having initially said in a police interview two weeks after the alleged incident that no intercourse had taken place.

In summing up the case, before the jury began its deliberations yesterday morning, Justice Michael Brett said it was a “classic word-on-word case” but that jurors could not simply weigh up the two versions of events and decide on the balance of probabilities which was correct.

Justice Brett said the jury members could not find the accused man guilty unless they were left with no reasonable doubt he had committed the crime.