Salvatore Incadela faces ACT Supreme Court trial over alleged rape on dirt track in Spence

The ACT Supreme Court heard those claims on Monday as alleged rapist Salvatore David Incandela, 41, went on trial after pleading not guilty to a charge of sexual intercourse without consent.

In his opening address to a jury, Crown prosecutor Trent Hickey said the alleged victim, a woman in her 40s, had met a man through a service called Zoosk.

Mr Hickey said the woman went to this man's Calwell home and had a number of alcoholic drinks one day in November 2020, but the host decided he was "not interested" in her because she did not resemble her profile picture.

The prosecutor told the jury the man ended up asking one of his friends, Mr Incandela, to "get rid of her" after the latter came over for a beer.

He said Mr Incandela was heading towards the woman's home in suburban Belconnen, so the 41-year-old offered to give her a lift.

Mr Hickey alleged that, on the way there, Mr Incandela stopped his white utility on a dirt track in Spence and raped the woman, who remembered "throwing up on the ground".

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"She told him to stop, but he didn't stop," the prosecutor told the jury, adding that Mr Incandela only ceased when he saw the woman was bleeding and "freaked out".

Mr Hickey said that when the woman eventually got home, "she lay down on her bed crying".

The jury heard a subsequent forensic medical examination found the woman had a laceration and two hematomas, which were "supportive of blunt force trauma".

Mr Hickey added that various parts of the woman's body were bruised in a manner "suggestive of a non-accidental cause".

The prosecutor gave an overview of the police investigation, telling jurors investigators had obtained location data from the woman's phone and used it to find the dirt track where the alleged rape was said to have occurred.

He said the trial would hear from multiple people who lived near the track, describing how one had reported seeing a man getting out of a car with his pants around his knees.

This witness also saw the man "with his waist moving" near the vehicle that had stopped on the track, and she told her husband she thought people were having sex there.

Mr Incandela, whose barrister Travis Jackson did not make an opening statement, was interviewed by police in December 2020.

Mr Hickey alleged the 41-year-old told investigators "a number of lies the Crown says are evidence of his consciousness of guilt".

The prosecutor told jurors these included denials about having met the alleged victim or been to Spence on the day in question.

He said Mr Incandela had also initially denied any form of sexual contact with the alleged victim, before later saying she had touched him intimately and performed oral sex on him.

The alleged victim has already given her evidence in videos recorded prior to the trial, and jurors began watching these on Monday afternoon.

Mr Hickey will keep playing them as the trial continues on Tuesday.

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