Jurors in the trial of Lawrence Jones, who denies two charges of rape, have been urged to ‘not make assumptions’. The 55-year-old, former founder of tech company UK Fast is alleged to have 'stupefied' two young women with unknown drugs before raping them on separate occasions at a flat in Salford in the early 1990s.

Mr Jones, of Brooks Drive in Hale Barns, denies two offences of rape and says he never met one of his accusers and says sex he had with a second women was consensual.

One woman, described as Woman A in press reports of the trial, alleges she was raped at a flat in Salford in 1993 after drinking a glass of red wine and taking a couple of 'tokes' of a spliff rolled by the defendant. The second woman, Woman B, claims she was urged to take a sniff from a medicine bottle containing a clear liquid. She alleges she instantly felt 'really really drunk' and was raped.

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On the ninth day of the trial at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Jones' barrister Eleanor Laws KC gave her closing speech to the jury.

“We live in a country where we say that if you make an allegation of something sexual happening to you, you are not expected to make that allegation a day, a week, a month or a year later,” Ms Laws began.

People are given time to process, that is our system, and as a result of such allegations, yes you can be charged and then we rely on the trust of the jury system. It is not the police to establish the truth, it is not the barrister, nor is it - with respect - Her Honour, to establish the truth. It is you. We trust you to make that decision.”

She said that jurors must ‘scrutinise’ the evidence from the two alleged victims in the case, ‘very carefully’. She said that the court had heard evidence from the complainants who went on to ‘speak to others’, but in reality the only people who knew what actually happened ‘if anything’, were the women and Mr Jones.

Ms Laws said that if jurors were to try the case on a ‘prism of guilt’, it would result in them ‘trying to feature that around the evidence’. “That is what the prosecution have done. The burden of proof stands on the Crown,” she said.

“It would not be right that you simply say: ‘Well the prosecution say they’re uncannily similar, these two women, so he probably did it’. Probably isn’t enough - you have to be sure. Don’t make assumptions.”

She said the courts have experience of ‘false allegations’, and that ‘just as real victims come in all manner of shapes and sizes’, so do the people ‘not telling the truth’.

Of Woman A, The barrister summarised that Mr Jones said ‘it didn’t happen’. “We are saying to scrutinise what is being said,” she continued.

“They both voluntarily took substances, one smoked cannabis and another sniffed a substance voluntarily. Are you sure he did meet Woman A? Did he give her something, did he shout at her, was he abusive to her, did he pin her down, was she frozen in fear?

“If the incident with Woman B happened as she described, she was too frightened to stay? Your own safety is so important, isn’t it? There is no suggestion she had the ability or even thought that she needed to protect herself from him again.”

Concluding her closing address, she stated that it isn’t for Mr Jones to ‘come into the witness box and prove anything’.

The trial will continue on Tuesday, when Judge Sarah Johnston is expected to address the jury in her summing up.

Proceeding