A YOUNG woman cried in the witness box as she denied lying about being beaten, choked and raped to “avoid getting in trouble”.

The 20-year-old was testifying at the Old Bailey trial of nine men accused of raping and selling young girls for sex in Oxford.

Known as Girl 3 as she cannot be named, she claims she was raped by Bassam Karrar at the Nanford Guest House in November 2006.

Last week she told the jury he threatened to kill her and urinated on her in the attack.

But Mark Milliken-Smith, defending Bassam Karrar, said the claim was “simply untrue” and the girl had “automatically” lied to “avoid getting in trouble” when the police arrived.

He said: “At no stage were you struck by him, you weren’t punched to your face or to your body.

“He did not at any stage threaten you, he didn’t attempt to strangle you. All through that night you had ample opportunity to leave and the only time you chose to do so was when the police arrived.”

He added: “You cried rape that night.”

But she said: “I didn’t cry rape. I was raped.”

Mr Milliken-Smith suggested the witness’s memory may not be as accurate due to the amount of drink and drugs she took.

He said: “It is right that your life was very chaotic at the time. An awful lot was happening.”

But she said: “I can recount every second of that allegation.”

And Mr Milliken-Smith said the witness had dropped the charges because it was a “wholly false allegation of rape”.

She broke down and said: “That’s not true.”

The young woman, now 20, says she was groomed by Mohammed Karrar before he began sending her to London to have sex with strangers.

But Tracy Ayling, defending Mohammed Karrar, suggested the witness had only met her client a few times and he had not known how old she was.

And she said: “If you were having sex with anybody it had nothing to do with Mohammed but to do with funding your drug habit.”

But the witness said Mohammed Karrar had got her into drugs and given her drugs for having sex, adding: “He set the situation up.”

The jury heard the girl had been reported missing to police 58 times.

And when asked by Miss Ayling about inconsistencies in police statements, she said: “It’s kind of hard to tell them six years of your life without missing things out.”

The court also heard the witness had told police she was raped by two Albanian men in June 2005 and by a taxi driver in March 2007.

And when asked why she had not told police about the Karrars, she said: “I didn’t want to.”

And she later said: “I don’t like to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

The court heard the woman dated drug dealers as an underage girl.

Girl 3 also claims she was abused by Assad Hussain and brothers Anjum and Akhtar Dogar.

The nine men in the dock deny all 79 charges.

The trial will continue tomorrow because Judge Peter Rook has a previous commitment today.