A man was yesterday cleared of raping a 17-year-old cleaner in a fertiliser tank in Attard.

A magistrate found the girl’s version of events so inconsistent the court could not be sure about what happened that day.

Paul Vassallo, from Kalkara, was at the time a nursing aid at Mount Carmel Hospital where the teenager worked as a cleaner.

On September 24, 2007, the 49-year-old picked her up from her house after asking her to clean a fertiliser tank against payment.

She was trying to seduce him by speaking about her sexual encounters with boyfriends

She had previously gone with her boyfriend to the field where the tank was located and picked grapes for the accused.

After drinking some home-made wine, the teenager removed her jeans because she was not dressed appropriately for the work. She also removed her underwear and wore a pair of boxer shorts instead. She told the court that soon after she entered the tank Mr Vassallo jumped in wearing only his boxer shorts.

He lifted her top and pulled down her shorts, forcing her down on to him. It only lasted a few seconds, she said.

The court heard there was no penetration.

The accused admitted he was aroused by the teenager and admitted groping her, touching her bottom and breasts.

Mr Vassallo told the court it was she who had seduced him and that when he picked her up she was wearing clothes she would normally wear for a night on the town. In fact, she told him she had been to Paceville and had not bothered changing.

At the field, he said, she was trying to seduce him, speaking about her sexual encounters with boyfriends. She stripped, put on a pair of his boxer shorts and got into the tank. She was wearing practically nothing, he said.

He got into the tank and groped her but it stopped there. She masturbated him but there was no sex.

Magistrate Audrey Demicoli questioned the veracity of the teenager’s version of events, especially the claim that a girl who had just been raped would continue with the job and then ask her aggressor to take her home instead of telling him to drop her where he had picked her up.

She said the inconsistencies in the alleged victim’s version of events made it very difficult for the court to believe all that was supposed to have happened. The court noted that Mr Vassallo had been consistent from the outset.

The teenager had been raped by a 22-year-old man during the village feast when she was 13. She had already had various sexual encounters with different boyfriends, so even the charge of defiling a minor had not been proven.

On the charge of committing sexual acts in public, the court noted that the alleged incident took place inside a closed tank in a private field not accessible to the public.

In 2012, Mr Vassallo had been found guilty of the charge and jailed for four years.

The judgment had been annulled on appeal due to procedural errors and was sent back to the Magistrates’ Court, leading to yesterday’s hearing.

Police inspectors Ramon Mercieca and Raymond Aquilina prosecuted. Lawyers Giannella de Marco and Stephen Tonna Lowell appeared for the accused.