A man claimed his friend was videotaping as he raped his ex-girlfriend at knifepoint, telling her: “Surprise - you’re on candid camera,” a jury has heard.

The woman sobbed as she recalled how the man threatened to slash her throat before subjecting her to the terrifying attack on her birthday.

According to her, it was the second time the man sexually assaulted her in the space of a month. Having reported both incidents to the Police, she said, the man repeatedly tried to intimidate her into dropping charges against him.

Neither she, nor the 37-year-old defendant can be identified for legal reasons.

The man denies entering the woman’s home last year, stealing $40 from her bag, sexually assaulting her and then causing her bodily harm when she tried to snatch the money back from him.

He has also pleaded not guilty to burgling her home in an incident earlier this year. On this occasion, he is accused of seriously sexually assaulting her while threatening her with a knife, then robbing her of $500 cash before driving his car into her legs.

The man rejects further allegations of intimidating and insulting the woman in her capacity as a witness in the case against him by sending her threatening letters from Westgate while he was on remand. His trial opened at Supreme Court yesterday.

In her evidence, the woman said she began a relationship with the defendant last year, but told him five months later that she didn’t want to see him any more. After this, she said, he came to the house where she lives alone one night.

“He asked me why I wanted to stop seeing him...he started to hit me. He said that he was going to f**k me up,” said the woman, during testimony that saw her frequently break down in tears.

She went on to tell the eight women and four men of the jury that the man grabbed a bag with her wallet in it, before pushing her onto her bed and attempting to rape her.

He did not manage to penetrate her. After this she struggled with him while trying to get her money back. “I was terrified,” she told the court, claiming she suffered marks to her face and bruises to her leg, arms and neck during the attack.

She reported the incident to the Police, alleging that the man phoned her two or three times while in Police custody after his arrest, asking why she was doing this to him.

According to Senior Crown Counsel Carrington Mahoney, the man was charged, brought before a court and bailed. However, the woman said he turned up again at her house around three weeks later on her birthday, pushing his way inside and locking the door behind him. “I was terrified. He had a knife in his hand. He told me ‘don’t make a f*****g noise’ because he’ll slit my throat,” she said. She told the jury the man’s phone rang, and he had a conversation with his friend before raping her.

“He told me to make it look like I was enjoying it. I was frightened. I didn’t know what to do. After raping me he got up off the bed, went to the kitchen to get a towel and he pushed me back on the bed. He told me: ‘Surprise - you’re on candid camera.’ He said his friend was outside the door taping the whole thing,” she alleged.

The woman said the man told her to drop the charges over the earlier incident. She refused, but agreed to fetch him $500 from an ATM “to get him out of my face.” She managed to shake him off after discovering she had insufficient funds in her account.

The man subsequently turned up at her workplace and again demanded she drop the charges, she said, and this time she handed over $500 after he threatened to slash the tires of her bike.

She claimed the man then drove his car into her legs, but did not knock her over.

According to Mr. Mahoney, the woman also reported this series of events to the Police. This time he was remanded into custody at Westgate after a court appearance.

In the weeks that followed, the complainant allegedly received two letters from him in prison - the first addressed to her workplace and the second to her home.

She described herself as “paralysed by fear” by the contents of the first, telling the court: “I didn’t have any idea how the letter got to my job. It was a threatening letter. It said that nobody would believe me that I was raped twice and if I stood before a jury they wouldn’t believe me (and) that I consented to sex with him.”

The woman read extracts of the hand-written letters to the jury, explaining that she reported them to the Police. The case continues.

Woman describes alleged sex assault