JLS Singer's Barrister Claims Alleged Rape Victim In Wolverhampton Has Selective Memory

22 May 2019, 17:55 | Updated: 22 May 2019, 17:57

A nightclubber who alleges she was raped by boy band star Oritse Williams in Wolverhampton has a selective memory around "tricky" aspects of her account, the singer's barrister has claimed.

In his closing speech to jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court, Mark Cotter QC said Williams and his alleged victim appeared to be a couple as they were captured on CCTV leaving a nightclub.

Ex-JLS singer Williams, 32, from Croydon, south London, denies raping the woman in a hotel room following a solo concert in December 2016.

The star's tour manager Jamien Nagadhana denies sexually assaulting the woman during the alleged rape.

Nagadhana, also 32 and from Hounslow, west London, told jurors on Tuesday that he touched the woman briefly as he tried to initiate a threesome.

Addressing jurors on the seventh day of the trial, Mr Cotter described the alleged victim's assertion that she could remember sitting on Williams's lap at the nightclub as "the understatement of the year".

Claiming that CCTV from the club showed three-way kissing and the complainant and two friends behaving in a raunchy, sexual way, Mr Cotter said of the footage: "Right at the end (the alleged victim) is on top of Oritse Williams.

"She leads him towards the door of the VIP area."

Describing the woman's limited account of her actions in the club as the start of her "selective" memory loss, Mr Cotter told the jury: "When she and Oritse Williams are standing outside the club, you may think they look for all the world as though they are a couple."

Referring to the woman's claim that part of her memory was simply missing, Mr Cotter added: "Every time it's a bit tricky, the memory goes."

Concluding his speech, Mr Cotter said of the rape allegation: "There is no realistic answer as to why he would do it.

"There is plenty of evidence, we suggest, that something happened between them and that the description given to the police at the time (by the alleged victim) is not true and accurate."

Earlier, prosecutor Miranda Moore QC invited the jury to consider Williams's evidence that Nagadhana was in bed asleep as the singer and the woman had consensual sex in the same room.

Ms Moore told the trial: "The main thing that Mr Williams has said, which is patently ludicrous, is that he was not aware of Mr Nagadhana, using my expression, lending a hand.

"He has not told the truth about effectively it being two on to one. He lied about that from first to last - and it's a really big clue about the way he behaved that night."

During the Crown's closing speech, Ms Moore said of the defendants: "Why are they not still friends? Why are they not still singing from the same hymn sheet?

"They are not because each is now trying to protect their own position at the expense of the other. That gives you an important clue as to what was really going on in that bedroom."

The judge is expected to sum up the evidence in the case on Thursday.