A Nepalese immigrant retail worker has been found guilty of twice raping a female customer inside an arts store at a Canberra shopping centre.
Abhishek Timalsina, who is aged in his early 30s and married, had his bail revoked on Tuesday after an ACT Supreme Court jury found him guilty of two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and four counts of committing an act of indecency without consent.
Timalsina was re-tried for the crime after a previous jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision in August 2023 after four days of deliberation, but the retrial jurors took just four hours to convict him, The Canberra Times reported.
The initial trial was the first test of the ACT’s affirmative consent laws, which require content to be free and voluntary and communicated to the other party, meaning not saying “yes” is taken to mean “no”.
In a police interview played to the court Timalsina’s victim said she visited the store at Westfield Belconnen on November 3, 2022, to return some art supplies when they began to talk and he asked to take photographs of her.
She said that he took some photos of her after she first refused but then gave in, following which he said “do you want me to kiss you?” and before she could answer told her “I’m just going to go for it”.
He then closed the shop and took her to a staffroom where he raped her twice. The women told police she had “stopped reacting completely” by that point and that she was concerned about getting pregnant so asked him if he had protection.
The woman said that after the first rape she “didn’t know if I had permission to stand up so I just stayed there”, and Timalsina then said “oh, you want more” and raped her again, the original trial heard.
She told police she “felt like everything was going wrong”, felt “sick and disgusted” and that she had physically resisted twice.
She went to Canberra Hospital immediately afterwards for a forensic and medical examination, and later told a friend via text “there were so many things I could have done differently” but her brain had “checked out”.
The court heard that Timalsina told police he thought the pair were “vibing and connecting”, that he thought they had been “flirting” and that because she kissed him back and did not say “stop” that he believed he had consent.
Timalsina’s sentencing proceedings will begin on August 20.
Header image credit: ACT Courts.
