Rape accused Colin Mack yesterday led his defence, telling jurors that he and his accuser engaged in consensual sex and afterward the woman’s mother attempted to extort $1 million from him.
From the prisoner’s dock, Mack, an entertainment promotor, denied raping the young woman, who was 19 years-old at the time of the alleged crime.
“I’m innocent of this allegation made against me. I’m very upset from the day the allegation was made to now… all of these presumptuous lies. If I was a female and I was being raped in a house when I get a chance to tell the police I would tell them everything, not wait five six years later or in the magistrates’ court,” he said.
Speaking for the first time in court since he was charged on April 15, 2009, Mack gave a different account of what transpired on the day his accuser said she was abducted, assaulted and raped.
He stated that he knew the young woman for several years before and she had travelled with his car a lot while he was working as a taxi driver on Camp Street. He said on April 10, 2009, the young woman stopped him and jumped into his car and later she began to complain that she was not seeing him a lot and that he had stopped calling her. He said they also spoke about an upcoming reggae concert, to which she had asked him to take her.
On the night of the concert, Mack said, he went to her house and picked her up in the presence of her mother to carry her to the concert. He said the young woman’s mother came out of the house and said she wanted to see who was carrying out her daughter.
He related that they were having fun and “doing a lot of stuff” at the concert that he could not mention, although he mentioned that they were “wining on each other and kissing.”
They went clubbing after the concert but not before a detour to her home because she needed to change her shoes, he added.
Mack said they went to Club Latino and after spending 20 minutes, the young woman asked to go to Blue Iguana. He said he did not want to leave his friends but the woman kept insisting that “this night was supposed to be for the two of them alone” and so he obliged and went with her.
He said in the club they started to dance and kiss and the woman told him to go outside. “It was bright outside… and she ask me, ‘Where we going; if it’s hotel or home?’” he said, adding that he told her he would prefer a hotel but she said she “didn’t want people to see her coming out no hotel at this hour.”
As a result, he said he took her to his place. On the way, however, he said she asked him to buy condoms and so they stopped at a “cheese shop” and he bought a pack.
At his place, he said, they had sex. Afterward, he noted, the woman noticed a picture of another woman on the wall and began to argue. He stated that he told her he did not want to argue but wanted to sleep. He said he explained to her that he had an event at the creek in a few hours and needed to rest but she continued to nag.
Mack said he left her and went to sleep in another room and a short while afterwards he was awakened by a woman in the house.
He said he asked the woman how she got into the house and she told him that his girlfriend had let her in. He said his accuser later told him that she would tell her mother that she had overnighted at the other woman’s place.
Later, when he got up, he said he saw the complainant searching for his house keys. He said she told him she was not finding the keys and if she did not find them she would have to jump through the window because her cousin was returning to pick her up.
At that point, he added, she already had one foot out of the window and so he decided to grab her and pull her back inside.
Mack stated that when the taxi driver came into his yard, the man asked why he was allowing the woman to jump through the window and he had to explain. He said the taxi driver carried the complainant and the other woman away and he went back to sleep.
A while later, he said, the young woman’s mother called him and demanded that he give her $1 million or she would go and report that he had raped her daughter. He said he told the woman that he would talk to her after he returned from his event at the creek.
However, Mack was arrested on his way to the creek and he later told the police that he had “legal sex” with the woman and that he did not hit her.
Meanwhile, a statement given by the complainant’s deceased mother was yesterday read to the court by a police witness. In it, she said she had tried several times to contact her daughter on her cell phone when she did not return home on the night of the alleged rape. “She never slept out before,” the woman was quoted as saying.
According to the mother’s statement, she did not know that her daughter had left with a man, and she was under the impression that her daughter had left with females friends.
She said she never tried to make an arrangement to meet with the accused. She said she called Mack and told him to lay off her daughter.
On Tuesday, the young woman had testified that she was held against her will for several hours, and was raped.
State prosecutor Mercedes Thompson closed her case yesterday. Mack’s attorney Peter Hugh is expected to call one witness today to testify for the defence. The verdict is likely to come on Monday.
