A two-week trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court has ended with a jury acquitting two men accused of sexually assaulting a young woman, finding them not guilty on all charges.
Following nearly seven hours of deliberations, Panormitis Charalampis and Michael Vrouvis were unanimously cleared.
Both men had faced charges of sexual intercourse without consent after picking up an intoxicated woman outside a nightclub in 2024, where she had been waiting for an Uber. They then spent around eight-and-a-half hours at her apartment.
Crown Prosecutor Rebecca Everitt alleged in her closing arguments that the men “knew they had managed to find an attractive, very drunk woman” sitting on the curb late at night and took advantage of her.
She maintained it was “plainly obvious” the woman was highly intoxicated and incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse. She pointed to CCTV footage that showed her lying on the ground and needing help to walk.
The prosecution also relied heavily on the woman’s testimony. She recalled “falling in and out of consciousness” while both men took turns having sex with her, in what the Crown described as “elaborate and extensive sexual interactions.”
Defence lawyers, however, challenged the reliability of her account, noting that the woman had conceded her memory was patchy and fragmented.
They presented a different narrative by arguing she had initiated sexual encounters with both men and may have regretted the night.
Summing up the competing cases, Justice Judith Kelly reminded the jury that Vrouvis’s lawyer, Stephen Robson SC, had highlighted CCTV footage showing the woman walking across the road and getting into the car. This footage contradicted the woman’s claimed “clear recollection” of being picked up and carried.
Justice Kelly said said that memory was “completely wrong” and demonstrated “unreliability.”
“He asked, how can you rely on her other clear memories, when she admitted in cross examination that she may have filled in gaps in her memory with assumptions,” Justice Kelly said.
She added that Vrouvis’s lawyer also argued that the woman’s behaviour, such as walking onto the balcony naked and sharing a cigarette with the men, was “inconsistent with her believing at that time that the two men in her apartment were rapists.”
“Both defence lawyers contended the behaviour of the two men was inconsistent with them having the belief there was a substantial risk [the woman] may not have been consenting, [including] staying in the apartment for eight hours, asking for her phone number and offering to get her breakfast,” Justice Kelly said.
When the verdicts were delivered, Charalampis and Vrouvis bowed their heads before embracing emotional family members outside the court.
Source: ABC News
