A Mount Isa vet who raped a university student has claimed he thought she wanted to have sex with him because she wore revealing clothing and waved at him when he walked past.
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Edward Charles Butterworth, 46, was found guilty after a trial in Mount Isa District Court last year of rape and assaulting the university student in 2015.
On Friday, the Queensland Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against his conviction
Butterworth raped the woman, aged in her mid-20s at the time, during a work trip to Karumba, about seven hours north of Mount Isa.
The woman had been visiting north-west Queensland to work on cattle stations.
Butterworth and the student had shared a few drinks and watched the State of Origin on the night he raped her.
The married father-of-three bet the victim $20 he could "make her boobs move without touching them" - before he did in fact touch them. That "trick" was the first sexual assault for which he was found guilty.
Shortly after, the student retired to her room for the evening.
Butterworth admits he entered the woman's bedroom naked, touched her breasts and vagina with his hand and performed oral sex on her.
That act constituted two more counts of sexual assault and rape, as his tongue had penetrated her.
During the trial, four friends of the victim gave evidence of the woman's "shaken" and "withdrawn" demeanour upon her return to Brisbane.
Butterworth sat silently as the jury of nine men and three women handed down their verdict after about two and a half hours of deliberation in August last year.
His wife, who was present throughout the trial, remained composed during sentencing, but embraced her husband in tears once court adjourned.
He was sentenced to two years and three months for the sexual assaults and two and a half years for the rape, to be served concurrently. But his sentence will be suspended after one year.
His appeal mainly argued that his lawyers had conducted the trial incompetently.
In December last year, four months after his trial, Mr Butterworth filed an affidavit, feeling he did not have the opportunity to tell his full version of events to lawyers and at his trial.
In the affidavit, which he did not mention at his trial, he wrote the student had been flirting with him by wearing revealing clothing and and waving at him as he went past.
When the student had been "squirming" trying to get away from him, Butterworth claims he "could feel her moving and it appeared she was enjoying it".
The appeal judges rejected that the affidavit was a genuine clarification of his memory, instead believing Butterworth was trying to rationalise his crimes.
His appeal was dismissed.
Courtesy of The Brisbane Times
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