A man accused of raping his young niece should not be painted as a "liar" because of his apparent frustrations with a prosecutor, a trial has heard.
"You'd be frustrated too if people were assassinating your character by incessantly accusing you of behaving like an animal in a room full of journalists," defence lawyer Edward Chen said on Tuesday.
"A frustrated person can still be an honest person."
Antonius van de Zandt, 72, faced the sixth day of his ACT Supreme Court trial on Tuesday, a day after he became "sick of" a prosecutor's questions he described as "dumb" and "strange".
"I'm getting angry," the alleged offender said during cross-examination on Monday.
Van de Zandt has denied charges of sexual intercourse with a child and committing an act of indecency on a child, relating to a March 1986 incident between him and his 15-year-old niece.
The alleged victim, Queenie van de Zandt, has given express consent to be named in media reporting.
"This is not a popularity contest," Mr Chen said on Tuesday, referencing the possible comparison between van de Zandt and the woman the lawyer described as a "confident" witness.
Mr Chen told jurors the prosecution had tried to make his client out to be an "evil sexual predator" and a liar who was "harbouring criminal intent".
At the heart of the trial is van de Zandt's claim he was "genuinely asleep" when he "sexually interfered" with his niece, who he says he did not know was in his bed.
He previously gave evidence that he had no memory of the act, and the court heard he had never admitted to it but, rather, had accepted the Ms van de Zandt's account.
Mr Chen asked jurors on Tuesday to keep an open mind about the possibility of sexual acts occurring while someone was asleep, which he said they might consider as going against common sense.
"I submit that it is not against common sense because you don't know what you don't know," the defence lawyer said.
"We don't know what's in the realm of human possibility and what is not.
"It is entirely possible the accused did the acts while he was asleep."
Prosecutor Caitlin Diggins previously described the claim as "simply implausible" and told jurors the man had acted "deliberately and voluntarily".
Ms Diggins previously described van de Zandt as unwilling to make concessions and as providing "almost scripted answers".
Mr Chen said his client had been "honest to a fault".
The defence lawyer said the alleged offender had "sacrificed his own credibility" by sticking to his version of events despite "unfortunate gaps in his memory".
Those gaps included how his wife had confronted him with details of the alleged offending the following morning.
"If he was a liar, imagine how easy it would have been for Mr van de Zandt to tailor his evidence to fit [his wife's]," Mr Chen said.
The trial awaits verdicts after the jury retired for deliberations on Tuesday afternoon.
