The accused man has been put on trial after pleading not guilty to multiple charges in the Launceston Supreme Court on Monday, including aggravated burglary, demanding property with the intent to menace or steal and rape. 

He has been accused of entering the 76-year-old woman’s home in July 2015, demanding $250 from her and forcing himself on her. 

He was 18 at the time. 

During a video interview with detectives in 2015, the woman described the moment she woke in the middle of the night to discover a man’s arm around her neck. 

When she started to make a lot of noise, she said the man told her to “settle down, it’s alright”, before telling her to take her clothes off. 

She told him no. 

It was after that, she said she was raped. 

“It was absolutely devastating, he kept pushing and pushing as hard as he could,“ she said. 

She said she thought the whole suburb “would have heard me screaming because of the pain he was causing”.

“It was just so frightening and so scary. 

“The whole episode was probably over in about 10 minutes, it seemed a lot longer.” 

The woman told detectives she believed the man was “desperate for sex” and when she asked him why he wanted money she believed he said for drugs. 

The video interview was played to the jury during the first day of the trial before Justice Robert Pearce. 

The jury also heard from Crown Prosecutor Peter Sherriff, who said it was not a question of whether the woman was raped, but whether the accused was the rapist. 

Defence lawyer Alan Hensley echoed Mr Sherriff’s comments. 

“There is no dispute she was raped,” he said. 

“The real question is who raped [her] ... she does not name [the accused] ... she does not know who attacked her. Nobody knows.

“It is very much a highly circumstantial case.”

The trial is expected to run until at least Wednesday, with the accused’s mother also expected to take the stand.