A man accused of twice sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend admitted sending letters asking her to drop the charges but denied they were threatening.

The defendant, who claims he had consensual sex with the woman, told a jury: "I was trying to simply show her that what she was doing to me was wrong... the point was to show her the seriousness of the situation, so she could think about the right thing to do."

The 36-year-old is accused of a string of offences in relation to two alleged attacks, all of which he denies. Neither he nor the complainant can be named for legal reasons.

The case for the prosecution is that the defendant sexually assaulted the woman in her own home during the first incident last year, stole $40 from her, and injured her when she attempted to retrieve the cash.

When she pressed charges over this, the man is said to have called her from Hamilton Police Station after his arrest in an attempt to intimidate her. He is further accused of returning to her home around three weeks later, despite bail conditions for the first charges banning him from contacting her. On this date, he is alleged to have raped her after threatening to slit her throat with a knife. He is also said to have attempted to intimidate her into dropping the charges over the first incident, before robbing her of $500 after threatening to run her bike off the road and slash her tyres. After this, according to the prosecution, he drove his car into her legs.

On Friday, Senior Crown counsel Carrington Mahoney quizzed the defendant over the final allegation that he sent two threatening letters to the woman from Westgate after he was remanded into custody. He admitted sending a letter written on prison-issued 'censored' paper to her residential address and asking someone to deliver another, written on yellow notepad paper, to her work address.

"I weren't sure if the one on the yellow paper would reach her so I sent the second letter," the defendant told the jury. However, he claimed: "I didn't try to put fear in her or intimidate her or scare her, just show her what she got me charged with wasn't right."

The case continues.