Charge dropped against busker accused of raping drunk woman he met in Glebe Park

Wallace Nya Quoibia had faced a trial in the ACT Supreme Court. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses an alleged sexual assault.

A charge has been dropped against a busker accused of raping a drunk woman he met in Glebe Park, bringing his prosecution over the alleged incident to an end.

Wallace Nya Quoibia was accused of raping the 26-year-old at his unit in Ainslie Village in the early hours of 4 December 2021.

He was 54 when he faced an ACT Supreme Court trial that began in September 2022 before it ended with a hung jury when jurors announced they could not come to a unanimous decision.

He had pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual intercourse without consent.

Then in November 2022, the Director of Public Prosecutions filed a notice declining to proceed with the charge, which means there will be no retrial and the prosecution of Mr Wallace over the matter is finished.

In the police interview with Mr Quoibia, recorded on 10 December 2021 and played to jurors during the trial, he told them he had been busking near Mooseheads that night before leaving, then later met the complainant while she was sitting on the ground, swearing.

He asked if she needed paramedics or police, then offered to take her home. At his unit, he claimed she got undressed on his bed and tried to jump on him, then he put a sheet over her when she went to sleep. He drove her to her aunt’s home the next day.

An officer asked if he had had sex with her.

“No!” Mr Quoibia cried. “And it wasn’t my intention.”

During the trial’s closing addresses, Mr Quoibia’s barrister Sarah Baker-Goldsmith told jurors that what her client had done that night possibly wouldn’t be what they might do, but it was not implausible.

She said there were six areas where they could find reasonable doubt, in part arguing that her client’s account was plausible while the complainant’s was not credible.