Rape accusedNEWS shot key video

A VIDEO taken minutes after a woman was allegedly raped by a family friend is the best indicator of how intoxicated the woman was, a lawyer has told the Southport District Court.

A jury of eight women and four men will continue deliberations today after a trial that lasted two and a half days.

Justin Nisbett has pleaded not guilty to one count each of rape and sexual assault.

It is alleged the woman woke in Nisbett’s lounge room after a house party to find him performing oral sex on her.

Minutes after the alleged rape, Nisbett took a video of the woman asking for her keys and mobile phone. The video, which has been played to the jury twice, shows the woman asking Nisbett for the items.

Nisbett repeatedly asks her to “get the (expletive)” out of his house and accuses her of touching his genitalia.

At one point his wife is heard telling him to stop acting like “an arsehole”.

Crown prosecutor Michael Mitchell told the jury in his closing statement: “He appears to be the one trying to set things up.

“He is the one suggesting in the video that she is the one that touched him on the (genitalia) as a way to discredit her.”

Mr Mitchell asked the jury to consider whether they thought the video showed a woman acting “crazy”, as Nisbett had asserted in his police interview, or if they thought she was a woman speaking slowly and “trying to comprehend what is going on”.

Mr Mitchell said that in text messages to the woman’s husband, also a friend, Nisbett denied any sexual contact.

He said it was not until a police interview that Nisbett admitted the pair had sex, but claimed it was consensual.

Defence barrister Andrew Godbolt, instructed by McMillan Criminal Law, said Nisbett may not have been forthcoming about the details initially, but he had always maintained he did not rape the woman.

“What I say is that looking at that interview fairly ... he gave a full and honest account – it was warts and all,” he said.

Mr Godbolt said during the interview Nisbett made admissions to things that may have been embarrassing to him.

He said the video was the only way the jury could determine how intoxicated the woman was.

“If you had raped someone, why on Earth would you make such a recording, because what you would risk would be having a distraught person yelling that you just raped them,” he said.

Mr Godbolt said that during that recording there was no complaint of rape.

“She doesn’t he said. look distressed,”