A businessman who was accused of abducting and raping a woman after he gave her a ride in his motor car has been freed by a Home Circuit Court jury.

Roy Ball, 40, of August Town, St Andrew, admitted having sexual intercourse with the complaint but he said she had consented.

The complainant testified at the trial which lasted for three weeks, that she knew Ball before the day of the incident. She said on February 16, 2010, Ball picked her up in Papine, St Andrew, pretending he was giving her a lift downtown Kingston.

She said Ball abducted her and took her to a grey building in the vicinity of Spanish Town Road and had sexual intercourse with her without her consent. She said she went voluntarily into Ball's motor vehicle. She said she she knew him before as a businessman in the August Town area.

Cross-examined by attorney-at-law Tamika Harris who represented Ball, the complainant admitted that in her statement to the police she said she did not go voluntarily into the motor vehicle.

inconsistencies

She said in evidence that when they arrived where the rape took place, she opened the van door herself and exited. It was pointed out to her during cross-examination, that in the police statement she said she refused to leave the car and Ball came around to her door, opened it and told her to get out. Harris pointed out 14 inconsistencies to the complaint in her evidence and the police statement.

Ball said in his defence that the complainant was terrified of her boyfriend. He said the complainant's boyfriend was very violent and because she got home late that night she made up the story that she was raped.

The complainant admitted under cross-examination that she made several reports at the August Town Police Station about her boyfriend. She said she even went to the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court in relation to domestic violence complaints she made against her boyfriend.

Harris, in her address to the jury comprising four women and three men, asked them to free Ball because there were too many inconsistencies in the case.

After Justice Sharon George completed her summation, the jury retired for two hours and found Ball not guilty of the charges.