Chidi Okwechime labels rape allegations 'nonsense' in ACT Supreme Court trial

Chidi Chike Okwechime, 34, took the witness stand in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday as his jury trial entered a second week.

The Conder man has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual intercourse without consent and a choking charge, denying claims he raped a woman described as an influencer at a Coombs unit in May 2021.

The pair had met at a Civic nightclub not long before the alleged incident.

Okwechime, a construction foreman, told the court the woman had introduced herself to him at Kokomo's, asked for cocaine and started "flirty talking".

He said she had propositioned him for sex in the toilets, but he told her something along the lines of "maybe later".

Okwechime said he and the woman eventually went into the disabled toilets, where people were "racking up" cocaine and snorting it off a hand-dryer.

He said the woman had some of the drug but he did not, and described the mood in the toilets as "positive".

Okwechime said the woman continued flirting with him and "talking, talking, talking", and they went to the nearby Fiction nightclub.

"She [was saying] she wants to fly me around the world, be my sugar mama," he said.

The 34-year-old told the court the group the pair were with went into the toilets again at Fiction, but there was not enough cocaine for the woman this time.

He gave evidence that the woman was angry about this, and that they later went to the Coombs unit where one of his friends lived.

There, Okwechime told the court, the woman started kissing him and they engaged in consensual sexual activity on the lounge and in another room.

He said the woman eventually "jumped up" and said he had raped her, prompting him to stop having sex with her "straight away".

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"I was just shocked with what she accused me of," Okwechime told the court.

He said he later sent the woman a message on Instagram "to see how she was", but he did not receive a response and she blocked him.

Asked by defence barrister Steven Whybrow whether he had forced the woman to do anything she did not want to do, Okwechime replied: "Definitely not."

"It's nonsense," he said in relation to all allegations of non-consensual sexual activity.

Later, under cross-examination by a prosecutor, Okwechime denied that the woman had been saying "no" or "stop" on the lounge.

He also disagreed with numerous propositions put to him about what had happened in the other room, including that he had used force on the woman because he had become annoyed about being "led on" by her.

The trial continues.

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