The 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a former Highland football coach was “actively participating” in a relationship with the accused, his lawyer told a jury today.
In his closing speech to the jury, defence counsel Mark Stewart KC said that his client Lee Murray had “committed a criminal offence” in having sex with the girl, but insisted her consent meant that it was not rape.
His comments came after three days of evidence during which the High Court in Inverness had heard how the 53-year-old the former head coach of Thistle Girls FC took the teenager to locations in and around Inverness for sex in his car.
Murray denies the charge of rape having lodged a special defence of consent.
He also faces charges of communicating indecently with the girl and causing her to look at a sexual image as well as charges of attempting to communicate indecently with a child and attempting to cause a child to look at a sexual image.
No ‘Svengali-like sway’
Mr Stewart urged the jury to dismiss the rape charge on the basis that the girl was consenting.
He said: “It is clear that she was actively participating. It is clear that she was willingly participating. It is clear that she was consenting.”
The defence advocate explained that, if they accepted this, his client would instead be guilty of having intercourse with an older child.
But Mr Stewart told jurors to be wary of the concept of grooming and told them it was not a legal term.
He said: “She is not under the Svengali-like sway of Lee Murray.”
He asked the jury not to disregard the girl’s own, unchallenged, evidence of consent and said: “Mr Murray is not sitting here masquerading as an innocent man – he is not sitting here trying to mislead people.
“A 15-year-old girl, according to our law, is perfectly able to consent to sexual intercourse with anybody she wants.
“It is, however, a criminal act for anybody to have sex with that person.”
He said Murray accepted that he had sexual intercourse with the girl, but told them “this is not rape – I ask you to reject that proposition”.
Cases bear ‘striking similarities’
In his own closing speech to the jury, the prosecutor, advocate depute Adrian Stalker, said: “She said that she thought the sex was consensual […] whether there was free agreement on her part is another matter.”
Mr Stalker drew the jurors’ attention to the age difference between the pair.
He also reminded the jury of messages Murray sent to a woman who was posing as a 14-year-old girl on behalf of a voluntary child protection group, saying there were some “striking similarities” between the cases.
In the messages, the advocate depute said, Murray presented himself as not as an “abuser” seeking sexual gratification but as an “advisor” and an “educator”.
When deliberating on the rape charge and the question of consent he asked the jury to consider: “Is that coming from her as a 15-year-old girl or does it come at the end of a process of grooming, or ‘education’ as he sees it?”
The trial, before Lord Sandison, continues.
