A verdict set to be handed down tomorrow in Yukon Supreme Court will come down to whether a woman consented to having sex.

Those were the words Crown prosecutor Robert Beck used Friday afternoon as he presented his closing arguments in the trial of Graham Belak, 30, and Shawn McLaughlin, 33.

The two men, both RCMP officers now on paid leave, are charged with the sexual assault of a woman in Watson Lake last year. They were off-duty when the March 8, 2009 assault is alleged to have happened.

Over the course of the week-long trial, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower heard of the sexual encounter following a party in the community.

The two RCMP officers hadn't met the woman, who was new to town, before the party.

After the gathering, which involved a lot of drinking, the three went to Belak's residence, where the two men had sex with her, court was told.

As Beck noted, the issue comes down to whether it was consensual.

Throughout his closing arguments, the Crown prosecutor argued much of the evidence presented there was subjective and should, therefore, be given little, if any, weight in Gower's decision.

While the woman agreed on the stand that she had been "flirty”, that doesn't mean she wanted to have sex, Beck said.

He went on to note other court cases showing that sexual assault cases should not be judged solely on what a complainant was wearing and/or saying at the time.

Many of the statements the woman made through the evening which came up during the trial could be open to interpretation, Beck argued.

Among the examples he cited, there was evidence at the party that she said the last one to touch her got to take her home. That could mean, he said, she was looking for someone to get her back to her home safely.

While Beck argued the court cannot put much weight on what the woman was wearing or what she said, he argued that there was more than her own evidence about her menstrual cycle.

The woman's husband, he said, provided that evidence during his testimony.

In her testimony, she was clear that she won't have sex when she's having her period because she thinks it's gross, the lawyer said, noting that's one reason she believes she was sexually assaulted.

Beck pointed to the woman's testimony that she may have been drugged.

There was a change, he said, between the site of the party and Belak's residence.

Something was different, and it was not due to too much alcohol, he said. Her eyelids closed more slowly, her thoughts seemed to be slower and she blacked out periodically during the incident.

She wasn't able to speak – only forming the first syllable of asking "why” at one point – and she felt as though she were immobile, Beck said.

As Andrew McKay, Belak's lawyer, noted later in responding to Beck's arguments though, there was evidence the woman was able to arch her back.

He went to cite the evidence of a doctor that there was no physical evidence of a sexual assault.

He noted that the evidence showed, in this case where a 240-pound man was allegedly assaulting her on a hardwood floor, a lack of injury "may be very, very relative.”

The doctor had testified, he pointed out, that there would be some evidence of that, possibly with injuries to her tailbone or buttocks, but there was no such evidence whatsoever.

Earlier in his closing arguments, Beck argued that little weight can be given to the absence of such evidence.

Even in some cases of young children being assaulted, there are sometimes no physical signs, he pointed out, adding a woman's vagina is similar to elastic and injuries may not be left from penile penetration.

Beck also tackled the evidence that the woman's story was not always exactly the same each time she told it.

"She (was), frankly, still a mess,” he said of the first time the woman told anyone about it, more than 24 hours following the incident.

Beck argued that it is not uncommon in sexual assault cases for the victim to wait to report the assault.

As he pointed out, her critical thinking skills were not operating to full capacity, given the situation, and she also had a fear that Belak and McLaughlin could be called to deal with it.

"She had no idea who would be called,” he said, after noting the small size of the Watson Lake RCMP detachment.

Defence lawyers took the position that the woman didn't want her husband to know she consented to sex with Belak and McLaughlin and therefore came up with the assault story.

Gower is scheduled to hand down his verdict at noon tomorrow.