A Police officer told a court yesterday how he found the female victim of a sexual assault curled up in the fetal position in a hysterical state on the side of Middle Road in the early hours of October 14 of last year.

A 35-year-old Warwick man is charged with serious sexual assault against the 29-year-old English victim on that date.

Inspector Michael Anthony Desilva told the court that he had been off duty, in his personal car driving west towards Somerset when he noticed a woman crying as she walked along Middle Road near the junction with Scenic Heights Road.

Insp. Desilva said he stopped the car and approached the victim, finding her curled up in the fetal position on the sidewalk.

"She was wearing a knee length dress,'' he said. "The dress was dishevelled and falling off her shoulders. She was also wearing beige pantyhose and they were rolled down to her ankles.

"I saw a pair of white or light coloured underwear tangled in the pantyhose.

She was carrying a brown purse on a strap and she wasn't wearing any shoes.'' Insp. Desilva said the woman was crying uncontrollably and that she had bruises and scrapes on her neck, throat and arms.

He identified himself as an off-duty Police officer and asked if she needed help. The woman asked that he show identification but Insp. Desilva said he didn't have any with him.

Eventually she got into his car, and Insp. Desilva said he took her to her home where a male friend was waiting. The Police were then called.

After returning the woman to her home, Insp. Desilva said that he and her male friend went with another attending Police officer to the area between the junction of Middle Road and Scenic Heights Road.

He said he proceeded to Heron's Nest Drive where he found the woman's brown shoes and a beige baseball hat in a grassy area blocked from view from Middle Road by a stone wall and darkened by a large tree.

Insp. Desilva said he called out to the two other men and did his best to secure the area as it was, to preserve the scene of the crime.

Insp. Desilva's testimony yesterday followed the close of the victim's cross examination by defence attorney Elizabeth Christopher.

On Monday, under cross examination by Crown Prosecutor Vinette Graham-Allen, the woman broke down as she told the seven woman, five man jury in her own words of how she was brutally, sexually attacked after having been thrown out of a taxi.

The woman said driver Kenneth Bourne had tossed her out of his taxi on Middle Road shortly after 3 a.m. because she was eating. While the two were arguing outside the taxi about the fare, a man approached the pair and intervened in the argument.

After Mr. Bourne took her money, he departed the scene and the woman was faced with a three-mile walk home along Middle Road.

Minutes later, however, she said the man who had approached the taxi pulled up on a bike and offered her a ride. While she initially refused, she eventually climbed on the bike side-saddle as she had no other way home.

But when the man refused to follow her directions to her home, she said she became concerned and jumped off the bike as he turned onto Riddell's Bay Road.

She once again started to walk toward home, but as she approached Heron's Nest Drive, she was grabbed by the neck from behind, she said.

"I was dragged backward along the pavement to an earthy area behind a tree,'' the softly spoken woman told the court.

Police witness testifies "He was pushing his hands up my dress. I was shouting `no'.

"I had my hands on my vagina and I was kicking a lot. He was trying to rape me. He had pulled down my tights and underwear. He had undone his trousers.

"He was lying on top of me. He was trying to remove my hands from my vagina.

"I was struggling, kicking, and shouting. It seemed like a long time. Then he got up.'' The woman said when the attacker fled, she noticed he appeared to be wearing the same clothes as the man that had given her a ride on his bike -- blue jeans, lighter-coloured sneakers and a long-sleeved shirt with a hood.

And his hood was pulled up over his head.

During cross examination defence lawyer Elizabeth Christopher challenged the woman that the man who attacked her was not the same man who had approached the taxi.

Taxi driver Kenneth Bourne has already identified the man who approached the taxi as the accused man.

Ms Christopher asked the victim if she had been "drunk'' on the night of the attack.

The woman replied that she had been drinking, but Ms Christopher challenged again, asking if she had been drunk. "What do you mean by drunk,'' the woman answered.

Ms Christopher then referred her to Police statements where she had told Police on two occasions that she was "drunk'' on the night of the attack.

Ms Christopher then questioned the victim on her memory of what the man who approached the taxi and the attacker had been wearing, the description of the bike ridden and her altercation with the taxi driver.

When asked to describe the cycle the women said she could only remember that it had been old. Ms Christopher asked if it had been a Yamaha-style bike. "I don't know. I don't know much about the bike. The bike wasn't trying to rape me,'' the woman replied.

Ms Christopher continued to challenge the woman's statements in court about the bike against Police statements in which she told Police she got on a "step-through bike''.

The woman then said she did not know about the bike, but the Police had asked her many questions about it during the interviews trying to elicit details and she had answered `yes' or `no'.

Presiding Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons had the woman clarify that while she had signed the statements, she had not written them herself.

Justice Simmons also asked whether the bike had been the type one must climb onto by lifting a leg over the bike and the woman replied "no''.

Ms Christopher asked the victim if her eyes had been closed the whole time.

"No,'' she replied. "I closed my eyes when it got really bad.'' Ms Christopher then had the woman look at a portion of the Police statement stating that she had her eyes closed the entire time.

Police officer Det. Sgt. Clive Brown also testified in court yesterday that he spoke to the accused man on October 14 outside PHC club in Warwick and that based on that conversation, he "invited'' the accused to the Police station to give a statement.

He also read to the court the statement he took from the accused in which the man admitted he was the one who approached the pair arguing outside the taxi.

In the Police statement, however, the accused man claimed that after the argument he saw the woman speaking to another man on a big, Yamaha-like bike further along the road.

The accused man said he saw her get on that bike and take a parcel from the driver. He said in the Police statement he believed she knew the person and was all right.

The trial in Supreme Court continues today.

Coverage of this trial in yesterday's paper, which started on Page 1, should have continued on Page 3 but, because of technical problems, did not do so. We apologise for this error.