REMEMBER WHEN

A TEENAGER burst into tears in Southport Magistrates Court and declared she did not want to speak about what had happened to her on a Tugun beach a month earlier.

The girl, 17, was giving evidence in a hearing of two charges of rape against Ronald Francis Thompson, 20, a staff sergeant in the Army Medical Corp, based at Enoggera in Brisbane.

Thompson pleaded not guilty to both charges.

The teenager, a sales assistant, told the court that Thompson forced her down on to the sand and undressed her while a knife was in his hands. She said he held the knife towards her while he undressed himself.

“There was nothing I could do, I feared for my life,” she told the court.

When asked for more details by the prosecutor Sgt Mick Cahill she said: “I don’t want to tell you”.

The court was then adjourned to allow the teenager to regain her composure.

The incident was understood to have happened on March 21, 1977, when she attended a disco in Coolangatta and drank about five glasses of beer.

Rather than drive, she tried to hitch a ride home and walked before a yellow car stopped to pick her up.

The girl told the court she took the ride, which then went to the beach.

“He had a knife in his right hand and he put it around my neck, it was touching my throat,” she said.

“He pulled me up from the car and walked me down to the beach.”