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Jury Mulls Fate of Former SoHo Club Promoter Accused of Rape

By Irene Plagianos | September 7, 2012 1:25pm | Updated on September 7, 2012 1:57pm

MANHATTAN — A former promoter for a SoHo club in the same building where Drake and Chris Brown had their infamous brawl awaited a verdict Friday in a rape trial against a female patron.

Lequan Clark, 24, who worked at Greenhouse club — upstairs from WiP, where Drake and Brown's allegedly got into a bottle-tossing fight over their shared love Rihanna — allegedly picked up a female patron on July 27, 2010, while she and her friends were celebrating her 26th birthday.

The pair headed back to his East Harlem apartment later that night, where prosecutors say Clark locked the woman inside his bedroom, pinned her down on his bed, and choked her before raping her.

When the woman left Clark's apartment on 112th street, near First Avenue, she told her cab driver she had been raped, and thought she was going to die, the cab driver testified at trial. The Manhattan woman called 911 after she left the apartment at around 4:30 am.

Prosecutors said the woman’s body was covered in bruises.

Clark has maintained his innocence, claiming their sex was consensual. His legal team has said that the woman made the allegations because she was upset Clark asked her to leave after sex.

During his closing statements Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney David Smith called Clark a "professional charmer." 

Prosecutors said the defense's allegation that "she got jilted" and then "made up a rape allegation in five minutes" is preposterous.

"What the defendant is calling the [victim] is a liar — a vindictive, evil, Machiavellian type woman who's framing a complete stranger for rape," he said.

But prosecutors have had a hard time convincing a jury that Clark sexually assaulted the woman. This is Clark's second trial on the rape charges. An earlier trial ended in deadlock.