corroborated, a defence lawyer told Magistrates' Court yesterday.

Lawyer Patricia Harvey told the court she found several inconsistencies in the testimony against her 41-year-old client.

The Warwick man, who knew the girl's family, was charged with sexually assaulting the girl on February 17, 1994.

He visited her home while her parents were not there, and while watching television in the girl's bedroom allegedly put his hand into the girl's underclothes and sexually assaulted her.

The girl's 16-year-old brother testified the man complained he could not see the television and asked the girl to sit up beside him.

But the brother was not in the room at the time of the alleged incident.

The man, who admitting drinking rum the night of the alleged incident, has denied the assault, saying he dozed off while watching television.

He also stressed to Police he could not remember the alleged incident because he had passed out.

And yesterday Ms Harvey said: "In all sincerity the highest the Crown can prove is that there is suspicion something inappropriate may have happened.

"The Police admitted that he was `questioned exhaustively', but there have been many things left out,'' she added. "The whole testimony relating to what happens and the events after, pose more questions than they answer.'' Ms Harvey also questioned why the girl did not tell her brother or her father about the incident when he came home or why the conversation the accused allegedly had with the girl after the incident had not been probed by Police.

"These are all rhetorical questions, your worship, where the answers have all seemed to disappear into the thickness of the black fog, where they will forever stay,'' she said.

However, Police prosecutor Insp. Peter Duffy pointed out a ten-year-old girl would probably much rather tell her mother about such happenings rather than two males, her father and brother who knew the man quite well.

Ms Harvey then asked why the girl brought her father in for moral support when she testified two years later, rather than her mother.

Insp. Duffy also pointed out it was odd the accused remembered every aspect of what had happened before and after the event and the positioning of where they were sitting on the bed, but when it came to the "nitty gritty'' he could not remember anything.

"There are a few minor inconsistencies in this case,'' Insp. Duffy added, "but nothing that fatally flaws the evidence.'' The case will resume on Monday before Magistrate Cheryl-Ann Mapp.