Accused denies rape

A MAN has pleaded not guilty to the rape of a prominent Cairns health worker on the side of a street after offering to help her get home.

The Cairns District Court heard the woman, aged in her 40s, who cannot be named, was trying to find somewhere to charge her mobile phone after a night out with friends on December 12, 2019 when Glen Edward Blake Gibson, 28, offered to give her a ride home on his bicycle. The pair did not know each other.

Crown prosecutor Claudia Georgouras told the court the woman accepted and he rode her around Cairns North on his handlebars before stopping to make repairs to his bike.

It is alleged he asked her to help and then attacked her, pushing her against a fence where he sexually assaulted her before turning her around and telling her to “s*ck this”.

Ms Georgouras told the court the woman lunged at him, falling to the ground.

“While she was lying on her back on Grove St the defendant took her bag and left,” she said.

She told the court he returned a short time later, threw her bag at her and kept riding away.

A taxi driver then saw the woman “kneeling in the dirt” on the side of the road before offering her help and driving to the police station.

Ms Georgouras said the court would hear evidence from the taxi driver who she told she had been “robbed and raped”.

Judge Dean Morzone told the jury at the start of the trial the key issue in the case was “one of consent”.

The court heard Mr Gibson was interviewed by police and admitted to having consensual sex with the woman.

“He tells police it was her idea and she was the one who wanted to do it,” Ms Georgouras told the court.

Mr Gibson pleaded guilty to one charge of fraud which related to his use of the woman’s credit card.

Ms Georgouras said it was alleged he went to a friend’s Manoora house earlier that morning, instructing her to use the credit card at a nearby service station to buy cigarettes. “That’s ultimately how police came to locate the defendant,” she said.

The trial continues on Tuesday.