Ex-Met policeman a 'liar', rape trial hears

A man accused of raping two women when he was a serving Metropolitan Police officer is a "liar" who lives in his own world, a prosecutor has told a trial.

Barrister James Thacker KC told jurors that they could not believe anything Jake Cummings said.

Cummings, 26, who lived in Lytton Way in Stevenage, denies rape and says sex was consensual.

A barrister representing the defendant told the jury at St Albans Crown Court they could not be sure he had not thought the women consented.

The trial heard Cummings, who has also lived in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, had been in relationships with both women.

One woman says she was raped while she was seeing the defendant; the other says she was raped shortly after a relationship ended.

Cummings told detectives that neither woman had said "no".

The jury has been told that Cummings had already been convicted of controlling and coercive behaviour and stalking, during his relationships with the women, following an earlier trial.

"Jake Cummings lives in the Jake Cummings' world, compared to normality," Mr Thacker told the jury, when summarising the prosecution case.

"How can you accept anything that is liar says?

"And the answer is, you just cannot."

Mr Thacker said Cummings was an "accepted manipulator",

Defence barrister Campaspe Lloyd-Jacob argued that jurors "cannot be sure" that his client was guilty.

"The question is whether you are sure that Jake could not reasonably have believed that [they were] consenting," she said.

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