A masseur has walked out of a Canberra court a free man after a magistrate found him not guilty of groping and kissing a customer on the massage table earlier this year.
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Xishan Liu sobbed with relief and hugged supporters after Magistrate Peter Dingwall handed down his decision in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday morning.
The 35-year-old Chinese massage therapist had pleaded not guilty to committing an act of indecency on the woman.
During an earlier hearing, the complainant told the court Mr Liu spread her buttocks apart forcefully before grabbing her breast and kissing her mouth.
The alleged incident occurred while the woman was having a massage at the Woden plaza in March this year.
But the magistrate said yesterday inconsistencies in the witness's versions of events given to people in the aftermath of the incident, the police and in the courtroom meant he could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt the alleged incident occurred.
In his reasons handed down yesterday, Mr Dingwall repeatedly noted the trauma of a sexual assault could explain discrepancies in an alleged victim's evidence, or their actions in the immediate aftermath.
The magistrate added, however, he was nevertheless obliged to consider such discrepancies when reaching his verdict.
The woman told the court she fled the massage shop in a state of distress, crying, and as she passed the front counter they offered to charge her just $20.
But witnesses working in the store at the time said it was the customer who offered to pay them money.
''My question is why, if she'd been assaulted in the way she described, would she have been intent on paying any money at all,'' the magistrate said.
Mr Dingwall also said his scrutiny of CCTV footage from the location did not support the alleged victim's account of fleeing the premises in distress.
The court heard Mr Liu was a man of good character with no previous convictions and no history of similar complaints while working at the store.
The magistrate also noted the masseurs working in adjacent booths, separated by curtains, did not hear the woman cry out other than to indicate the massage was too hard.
''From the evidence I've been provided by the prosecution, for the reasons and analysis of evidence that I've undertaken, I'm not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt the defendant committed the offence,'' Mr Dingwall said.
He returned the verdict of not guilty at the close of the prosecution case, without hearing evidence from the accused man's lawyer.
The office of the Director of Prosecutions have agreed to pay Mr Liu's costs.