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THE woman at the centre of Luke Lazarus’ rape trial shared her frustration and heartbreak at his not guilty verdict, saying she felt “let down and confused.”
Her emotional Facebook post follows the end of the rape case on Thursday, when Lazarus, 25, was acquitted of raping the then 18-year-old at a Kings Cross nightclub.
A jury had previously found him guilty, but on Thursday his conviction was quashed on appeal and he was cleared in a judge-alone retrial.
The woman on Friday shared her anguish via Facebook saying while the case is over, “the reality is this doesn’t get to be over for me.”
She said she “lost something” that night, and has been “searching for it ever since”.
“There’s something I need to get off my chest. I’ve spent far too long feeling embarrassed and ashamed. The 18-year-old in the story is me,” she said in the post, as she thanked friends and family for their support and praised police, and especially one detective for “pouring more time, effort and care into this case than anyone” during “this sh***y part of my life”.
Luke Lazarus after his initial conviction was quashed last year. Picture Adam YipSource:News Corp Australia
“Those awful things happened to me. I am that girl,” she continued.
“I don’t get to know who I would be today had this not happened to me, and I mourn for that person. She seemed like she was on her way to being great.”
She said admitting she needed help — and asking for it — in the wake of the incident was vital to “saving” her.
“Nothing has ever made me feel better than admitting I needed help,” she wrote in her post.
“At first I felt like I needed to be happy and it would all just go away. I didn’t want anyone to worry and got mad if they did…
“When I finally gave myself permission to answer the question ‘How are you?’ with anything other than ‘Good!’, it saved me.”
Mr Lazarus spent 11 months in prison before his conviction was overturned this week.
During the retrial, Judge Tupman recognised the woman did not consent, but also accepted Mr Lazarus’s “genuine and honest belief” that the 18-year-old virgin was a willing participant.
Mr Lazarus spent 11 months in jail before his conviction for anally raping an 18-year-old woman in an alleyway near Soho nightclub in May 2013 was quashed.
The woman’s anguished post came just as the Daily Mail reported on a huge celebration held for Luke at the family’s $8 million Eastern suburbs home on Thursday night in the wake of his acquittal.
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