Snooker star rape case girl 'lied'

The student who said she was raped by snooker player Quinten Hann at the Savoy hotel invented the claim to save her relationship with her boyfriend, the Old Bailey heard today.

The woman, 21, had had a one-night stand on an earlier occasion with a stranger she met in the Roadhouse club in Covent Garden where she would later encounter Hann, the jury was told.

Her relationship with her boyfriend had survived that first brief affair, but they have since parted - though not because of the alleged rape, the court heard.

Australian Hann, 25, ranked 14th in the world and known as "the wizard from Oz", denies raping the woman at his Savoy apartment in October last year. He claims she consented to sex.

Today the student strongly denied inventing the rape allegation in a bid to appear "innocent" to her boyfriend.

But Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, defending, told her: "You are trying to explain to your boyfriend by this account how what happened to you that evening was against your will and that really it should not interfere with your relationship with him because you were forced.

"This is all about an invention to explain to your boyfriend what an innocent little girl you are."

The case continues.