An 18-year-old woman accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl appeared in a Magistrates? Court trial on Monday.

The Devonshire woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to the charge, which is alleged to have happened on October 9 of last year.

The court heard that the alleged victim was a 15-year-old girl at the time of the incident. She claimed that a previous sexual relationship she had with the accused had ended at the time she was sexually assaulted.

Crown counsel Oonagh Vaucrossen?s case was that after the victim had ended the relationship with the accused, she sexually assaulted her at the rear of City Hall.

Lawyer Craig Attridge claimed that the victim was not sexually assaulted at all, but instead was being pressured by her mother and neighbours about being a lesbian.

The complainant claimed she was sexually assaulted and that she ended the relationship with her lover because she felt it was a sin and that her lover had punched her in the face.

During the trial the court heard that the complainant had enjoyed a sexual relation with the defendant.

?I wanted to do it even though I knew it was a sin,? said the complainant.

?I ended the relationship with her because she had punched me in the mouth, because she thought I was sleeping with someone else. She thought I was sleeping with a man.?

The complainant told the court that she and the defendant had become closer after she miscarried in January of 2002.

She said: ?It was like she really cared for me, like a regular girlfriend.

?It wasn?t until she had come over to watch videos when she gripped me on the back of my neck, started choking me, and put her tongue in my mouth.?

The victim said that her father came and saw them kissing and asked ?what?s going on??.

She said they secretly continued their relationship for months until the defendant punched her and after that she said she telephoned the defendant and told her that the relationship was over and had not seen her up until the day of the sexual assault.

She said: ?I was standing near Ice Queen on Queen Street with two girlfriends and the defendant asked me to come to her.

?I went, because I did not want her to embarrass me in front of my friends.

?We met at the back of City Hall and we talked for a long time and then she wanted to know whether or not I had been having sex with anyone else.

?At this point she opened my trousers and pushed her fingers into me and began kissing me.

?It seemed to go on for a couple of hours.?

After the assault the accused dropped her off near her house and she walked home.

Her parents were waiting outside and when she told them what had happened they called the Police.

The mother of the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said her husband had caught the pair kissing in their home in February of 2002.

After the kissing incident they spoke to the defendants mother, who said that she would speak to her daughter about the girls kissing.

The mother said she had not realised that a sexual relationship had begun after the girls had been caught kissing or that they had spent nights together at the defendants house without her knowledge.

The Bermuda Police Service?s WDc Hataya DeSilva of the Child and Juvenile Services said the victim had been reported missing by her grandmother and she and two other officers went to the defendant?s house in June, of last year, and found the victim hiding in a closet. Mr. Attridge asked the victim if she was present at anytime when her parents went to see the defendant?s mother, and if she remembered her mother saying ?she would rather her daughter be a whore than a lesbian?.

But the victim denied ever hearing her mother say those words.

The case continues on November 28 in front of Magistrate William Francis.