Rape victim, or spiteful fantasist?

"The complainant was pinned down by his body weight, and her fear had rendered her numb. She had no strength," Ms Williams told the Melbourne Magistrates Court. "His hands were over her face and over her mouth to prevent her from screaming."

Charged on Christmas Eve 2008 with rape over an alleged incident in his parliamentary office on the night of September 10, 1998, Theophanous has maintained his innocence.

Yesterday his barrister made it clear the upper house MP and former minister for industry and trade would concede no ground.

"This is the evidence of one woman against one man. A woman motivated by spite. A woman who was a self-confessed drug addict," Robert Richter, QC, said.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was an acquaintance of Theophanous' when, she alleges, after meeting him for a drink one night he took her on a tour of parliament and then raped her on the couch in his office.

"He pushed me onto the couch. I started to cry and I said that I wanted to go. He put his right hand over my face and throat . . . I was in agony and pain," the woman said in a statement tendered to the court.

The woman said that during the alleged rape her phone rang and Theophanous stopped what he was doing, allowing her to answer her phone and make an excuse to leave.

"When we were outside he said, 'What I like about you is that you are loyal.' In fear and shock I said nothing," she said.

The woman, who now lives in Greece with her parents but has returned to give evidence, said after the attack Theophanous threatened to make her brother do a full two-year term of service in the Greek army.

"I took this as a threat. I totally avoided him and I didn't return his calls or messages," she said.

Theophanous continued to contact her, she said, sending her texts with explicit content. "One of the most offensive messages that I cannot erase from my mind is the one that read, 'I want to be inside you, I want to come inside you,' " she said.

Ms Williams said telephone records would show that Theophanous had been in the city on the night of the alleged assault, and that between November 1999 and January 2006 Theophanous called or messaged the woman about 275 times.

Mr Richter accused the woman of constructing a fantasy with the aim of getting money from Theophanous. He said she had made 17 statements in total, each different from the last.

"The evidence will demonstrate that the complainant is a fantasist. A manipulative fabricator of stories," Mr Richter said.

In the first statement the woman alleged the rape took place in the winter of 2000, not September 10, 1998, he said.

Her evidence was unbelievable, he said. "It is not believable that a man who is in the process of raping her is going to stop because there's a phone ringing for her," he said.

The woman began giving evidence in a closed court yesterday. The hearing is expected to last several days before magistrate Peter Reardon decides whether or not to send Theophanous to trial.

Theophanous has aggressively fought the charges. He has also launched a $10 million lawsuit in Greece, a suit that Mr Richter said was crucial to the defence case because it allowed access to the woman's Greek phone records.

But Ms Williams said that Theophanous' lawsuit was designed to intimidate and bully the woman.

The hearing continues.