Man found not guilty of raping ex-wife

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A Diego Mar­tin man has been found not guilty of rap­ing his ex-wife when they were still mar­ried but sep­a­rat­ed.

A nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore Jus­tice Gail Gon­za­les re­turned a ver­dict for the man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held due to the na­ture of the case, at the end of tri­al on Thurs­day.

The charge stemmed from an al­leged in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 16, 2019.

The cou­ple got mar­ried in 2014 and had two sons.

The woman claimed that she caught her hus­band be­ing un­faith­ful sev­er­al times and he be­came abu­sive when­ev­er she con­front­ed him.

She claimed that she re­turned to her par­ents’ home with their chil­dren af­ter ap­ply­ing for a di­vorce and pro­tec­tion or­der in April 2018.

She claimed that on the date of the al­leged sex­u­al as­sault, she was liv­ing in a two-bed­room apart­ment, which her hus­band paid the rent for.

She was at home alone as her hus­band took their sons for the week­end the day be­fore. She al­leged that around 3 am, she was awak­ened by some­one bang­ing on her bed­room door. She claimed she recog­nised his voice and opened the door.

She claimed he ac­cused her of be­ing in a re­la­tion­ship with an­oth­er man, choked her, and be­gan search­ing her cell­phone. She claimed that he pinned her on the bed and raped her be­fore leav­ing the apart­ment.

She made a re­port to the po­lice the fol­low­ing morn­ing. When he was ar­rest­ed, he ad­mit­ted they had sex but claimed it was con­sen­su­al.

Dur­ing the tri­al, the man’s lawyer, Rus­sell Warn­er, not­ed that a doc­tor found no in­juries on the woman’s body when she was ex­am­ined af­ter mak­ing the re­port. He al­so not­ed that the fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer, who charged his client, on­ly saw “hick­ies” on the woman’s neck when she made the re­port.

While un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, the of­fi­cer ad­mit­ted that she did not con­duct a fair in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She claimed she did not have the ex­pe­ri­ence or train­ing to in­ves­ti­gate such a crime and she was not giv­en as­sis­tance de­spite her re­quest for such.

She con­firmed that she was of the opin­ion that the ev­i­dence she gath­ered was in­suf­fi­cient to sup­port the charge but was still in­struct­ed by her su­per­vi­sors to charge the man.

The man was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kashif Gib­son. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions was rep­re­sent­ed by Roger Hinds and Ch­enelle Moe.