Lawyers finished their closing arguments yesterday in the trial of a Policeman charged with sexually assaulting a visitor last December.

Both Crown counsel Oonagh Vaucrosson and defence lawyer Kim Wilson pointed out inconsistencies in witness testimony, agreeing with Acting Senior Magistrate Carlisle Greaves that the issue was not which story was most believable, but whether or not the complainant assented to sexual contact.

The complainant previously told the court that she awoke after a night of drinking to find the defendant, whom she had met just that night, above her.

She claimed to have pushed him off, saying: "What the hell do you think you're doing."

Then she said she discovered her knickers were down and a tampon she was wearing had been removed.

The defendant, however, asserts that after he asked her if he could share her bed and she agreed, it was she who initiated sexual activity. Claiming he removed the tampon without ever removing her knickers, he said shortly after she got up from bed and left the room. Thinking she would come back, when she had not returned several minutes later he dressed himself and followed her.

Both agreed they had a short conversation in the living room of the apartment they were in during which the complainant used the word "violated". They were trying to keep their voices down, however, so as not to awaken two friends asleep on the floor - one the male friend the visitor had come to visit, and the other a female friend. The defendant asserted he heard these two "getting it on" during the night, although both friends denied on the stand that any sexual activity occurred between them.

The defendant's claim that he removed the woman's tampon while she was lying horizontally on her back and wearing her knickers properly was "impossible", said Ms Vaucrosson during her closing argument.

And it was strange, said Ms Vaucrosson, that when he got up to look for the woman after she left he got completely dressed again - shirt, jeans, boots - even though he said he thought she was coming back to bed.

Finally, Ms Vaucrosson said, the defendant claimed in court he assumed the woman was upset because she had previously been in a relationship with the male friend who at that moment was asleep with the other woman on the floor.

However, said Ms Vaucrosson, the defendant did not ask her what was wrong, nor did he stay to find out, even though he had just been so intimate with her. Instead he left after making a comment along the lines of "I've made a dick of myself", overheard by the woman on the floor.

He also seemed confused on the issue of whether the alleged victim and her male friend were a couple or not, Ms Vaucrosson said.

Ms Wilson looked first at credibility, consent, and then motive.

Saying the testimony of the female friend in particular was inconsistent with other Crown witnesses, she pointed out that the complainant never told the court she awoke to find the defendant having intercourse with her. The female friend, however, told the court that the morning after when she asked the woman what happened, the woman claimed she awoke to find the defendant having intercourse with her.

She also observed that while the female friend claimed in court the male friend chased after the defendant when he left, the male friend made no mention of this happening while on the stand.

As for consent, she said in light of the victim's own admission that she was tolerably sober when she went to bed, it was impossible to believe she would have remained asleep on her back as someone removed a tampon from her body.

"I don't mean to be sexist, but I am disappointed the judge is not a woman," she told Mr. Greaves. "If nothing else, the tampon should form an element of reasonable doubt ... It is totally inconsistent, totally unbelievable."

The woman consented to sexual activity, she said, because she was "a woman scorned" by her male friend, who at that time was in the other room with the other woman. "That was sufficient for her to start the ball rolling," she said.

Ms Wilson said the complainant then regretted her actions, however, and made the "bogus complaint" of sexual assault - a complaint which, said Ms Wilson, she then had to follow through to the bitter end.

Mr. Greaves will give his ruling on the matter on May 15.