A NIGHTCLUB boss accused of a cocaine-fuelled sex attack on a young woman was told his defence was ‘desperate’ as the trial enters its final stages.

The jury of six men and six women is expected to retire today to consider its verdict in the trial of Bushwackers and Browns at the Quay owner Darren Pinches, who stands accused of charges relating to drugs and a sexual assault.

Yesterday, two very different pictures were painted of the 52-year-old businessman, now of Bromyard Road, Worcester.

The prosecution said Pinches had mounted a 'desperate' defence and there was a ‘a clear pattern of abuse of vulnerable and incapacitated women.’

However, Pinches's defence lawyer said the case was built on 'shifting sands' and slammed one of the women for 'telling lie after lie'.

Pinches denies the five counts against him. He stands accused of administering cocaine to a then 20-year-old woman with intent to stupefy or overpower her before sexually assaulting her in a Bushwackers storeroom on New Year’s Day last year.

He is also accused of supplying cocaine to a then 19-year-old woman in the Crypt at Bushwackers and again at an apartment at the Quay during the Worcester floods between February 9 and 15, 2016.

A third woman, then aged 40, alleges Pinches offered her cocaine in a room at Browns at the Quay between September 10 and 13, 2015. The woman claims Pinches demanded sex, comparing him to fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

The woman told a jury earlier in the trial that Pinches or a member of his staff had also spiked her drink before she fled the building and locked herself in her car.

Pinches also denies he was in possession of cocaine after police stopped him flushing it down the sink of his home in Berkley Gardens, Fernhill Heath on January 13 last year, the same day as traces of the same type of cocaine were found on top of a speaker in at storeroom at Bushwackers.

Ben Aina QC, prosecuting, challenged defence claims that Pinches was embarrassed by scars on his legs described by one of the women.

He told the jury: “There was no embarrassment in showing the scarring just as there was no embarrassment in dropping his trousers in front of a female trainee solicitor without warning in his interview.”

He asked the jury how the complainant could know about the scarring unless she saw it.

Mr Aina said if the sexual assault allegation were ‘malicious’ why did she not ‘go a bit further’ and claim something more than ‘sexual groping.’

He also said there was ‘an abundance of supporting evidence,’ including a doorman’s account of the alleged sexual assault victim ‘wide-eyed’, ‘upset’ and ‘fearful’ at the bottom of the steps to the storeroom, a glass collector who said the woman told him ‘Darren tried to rape me’ and two of her friends who described her curled up in a ball in The Cross without shoes and with mascara running down her face and her lipstick smudged.

He invited the jury to be ‘extremely sceptical’ about a document produced late in the trial by the defence which recorded that the cocaine dropped off at Pinches’s home by manager Mark Humpage was found in a Bushwackers toilet.

Mr Aina said: “What there has been has been a desperate attempt by Mr Pinches to distance himself from his drug use firstly by lying he never took drugs and secondly by trying to suggest some kind of contamination argument and thirdly by producing this very suspect document late in the day.”

Mr Aina said there were similarities in the accounts of the three women, describing ‘a clear pattern of abuse of vulnerable and incapacitated women’ by a man who considered himself ‘untouchable.’

But Michael Burrows QC dismissed the similarities between the accounts of the three women as ‘superficial.’

He said: “The sad reality is that people do make false allegations and you may never discover the reason why they’re making those false allegations.”

He referred to ‘the shifting sands of the prosecution case’, describing how the dates on the indictment had twice been changed to match later witness evidence.

He said at the time of the February 2016 allegation the Quay was ‘gutted’, ‘a building site’ and a ‘shell’ and that flood water would have come up to the complainant’s knees not her ankles as she claimed.

He also referred to ‘paranoia’ as a side effect of cocaine use and suggested any consensual encounter with Pinches was ‘imagined’ with ‘all the hallmarks of an account not based on reality.’

He described the woman who alleged the sexual assault as telling ‘lie after lie after lie to try to get attention from her mother’ including that she had a miscarriage of twins, had gone to hospital after an overdose, had been admitted to hospital with blood loss and had been checked for ‘cancerous cells.’

Mr Burrows said the woman had previously admitted cocaine use and that when she came downstairs after the alleged sexual assault her dress had not been out of place or disturbed.

Mr Burrows also said the search of Bushwackers on the day of the defendant’s arrest was ‘flawed’, involving some of the same officers who could have been exposed to ‘a puff’ of cocaine as Pinches was restrained in his bathroom.

The defence also argues that the alleged sexual assault victim could not have been ‘barricaded’ in the storeroom with Pinches as there was no door. Mr Burrows also said two of the complainants were ‘friends’ and one had made her allegation to bolster that of her friend.

The trial continues.