Jury considers verdict in Ipswich park rape trial

The jury in the trial of a teenager accused of raping a girl in an Ipswich park has retired to consider its verdict.

Before Ipswich Crown Court is 19-year-old Riley Lloyd, of Glastonbury Close, Ipswich, who has pleaded not guilty to raping the girl in Bourne Park in 2018, when he was 16.

The jury retired to consider its verdict on Thursday (July 8) and is expected to continue its deliberations on Friday (July 9).

Giving evidence during the three-day trial, the alleged victim accepted she had gone to a private area in the park with Lloyd but denied wanting anything sexual to happen between them.

Cross-examined by Lloyd’s barrister Andrew Thompson, the girl denied flirting and being all over Lloyd and then kissing him on the lips and offering to perform a sex act on him.

She claimed that she had struggled to get away from Lloyd and denied having consensual sex with him.

She accepted she had hugged him at the end of the alleged incident but could not explain why she had done that.

Lloyd told jurors he had initially told police there had been no kind of sexual contact, consensual or otherwise, because he was scared, and having been accompanied by his parents in interview, did not want them to know.

He denied creating a story to fit the forensic evidence, which included a sample of DNA taken from semen found on the girl's sleeve.