Accused rapist Lachlan Young claims he was “doing the wrong thing” by making out with another girl behind a shed while he had a girlfriend at home, but denies raping her.
The carpenter took to the witness stand in his County Court trial on Friday to tell the jury his version of what happened in the early hours of that February 2024 morning.
The 24-year-old Ballarat man is accused of raping the 16-year-old girl in the backyard of a Sebastopol home following a night of drinking and playing pool.
He was 21 at the time and has pleaded not guilty to a single charge of rape.
Mr Young told the jury the teenage girl propositioned him after he went behind the shed to urinate and “one thing has led to another”.
He conceded they began kissing, and that he put his hands down her pants to digitally penetrate her – all with her consent.
When prosecutor Andrew Buckland put to him that he then asked the complainant if he could “f–k” her, and did it anyway when she said no, Mr Young said: “No, that did not happen.”
He repeatedly said he never had sex with the girl.
“There was never any penile-vagina sex,” Mr Young told the court.
Mr Buckland further suggested Mr Young was aroused and wanted to have sex with the girl, to which he responded: “Not really, I had a partner at home.”
He then quickly added: “I was doing the wrong thing. It shouldn’t have got to that stage.”
Mr Young told the jury that he “pulled it up” after the girl told him her age.
“Once she told me she was 16 I immediately pulled my hand out,” he said, adding that he then “gently pushed her away”.
Asked by his lawyer Glenn Casement why he did that, he said: “Because I wasn’t interested in the age gap and I didn’t want to go down that path of getting in trouble.
“I said ‘nothing more can happen. Sorry, I’m not interested’.”
Mr Young said when he walked away to return to the shed where his friends were still socialising, the girl insisted they could still hook-up, that no-one would have to know or get into trouble.
The court earlier heard the complainant said Mr Young and her had been “flirting” with each other throughout the night and exchanged Snapchat details before she went to bed inside the house.
She alleges Mr Young and her continued messaging on Snapchat, where she told him her age and he invited her to come back outside to meet him.
“Come on, please. Just five minutes and I’ll make it worth it,” she said he wrote to her.
Mr Young denies ever sending those messages.
He acknowledged socialising with the complainant and that they had added each other on Snapchat.
But he said they communicated “very little” on the app that night.
He said he believed the girl was 18 because he saw her drinking, and “overheard a conversation they had been at the pub earlier that night”.
He also recalled drinking Great Northern mid-strengths, stating he had “two beers every hour” from arriving at the gathering at 10pm on February 4 until 5am the following morning.
He claims the rendezvous with the girl happened at 6am, while she says it was earlier.
Both said they were together in the backyard for about five minutes.
“Once I went into the shed she went into the house,” he said.
He said he blocked her on Snapchat the following month because she was sending him messages accusing him of “f–cking her”.
“I kept receiving these messages and I didn’t want to entertain it as such. I wanted to remove myself from the situation,” Mr Young said.
Snapchat messages between the pair were shown to the jury where she has confronted him in the weeks after, saying: “How’s ya Missus, how would she feel about u f–king an underage and cheating on her?”.
He texted back: “What are u on about?”
Asked by Mr Casement why he responded with those words, he said: “Because this is the first time I’ve heard of these allegations.”
The court heard the girl had told her best friend about the alleged rape within hours of it happening.
Weeks later, she broke down at school and revealed she had been raped to a student welfare counsellor, who reported it to police.
The trial before Judge Caitlin English will continue on Monday.