A Charedi woman who said her ex-husband raped her retracted the claim because she feared being stigmatised by the strictly Orthodox community, a court heard.

The woman, who cannot be named, said her ex-husband bound and raped her in a “dungeon” in a warehouse, and then left her there locked in.

The ex-husband is being tried on charges of kidnap, rape and false imprisonment at Snaresbrook Crown Court. He denies the charges.

During the court proceedings the complainant has sent several emails from Israel, where she had gone before the trial, withdrawing her allegations.

But prosecution barrister Charlotte Newell told the court that the woman feared the effect a conviction would have on her family in the Charedi community.

Giving her closing argument, Ms Newell said she had “retracted her complaints because to put up with what happened that day is easier and more tolerable to her than the break-up of her family and the effect it had on her.”

In a previous letter the woman had told the court, “I do not wish to proceed with the matter further as it will lead to the break-up of my family. The real victims will be my children.”

Addressing prosecution concerns that the defendant had put pressure on the complainant not to pursue the case, Ms Newell told the jury: “You may think that this is a man who never for a moment thought that she, with all the strictures put on her and the nature of their relationship would ever have the courage of her convictions, and in the end she didn’t.”

The woman had been found by police at the warehouse in a “distressed and disoriented” state, with bruises which, the prosecution said, were consistent with having been recently inflicted.

Ms Newell rejected the defence argument that the couple had had consensual sex in the warehouse in the wake of a heated argument. She told the court that it was unlikely that the estranged couple’s thoughts could have turned to sex in the moments after the complainant had just allegedly attacked the defendant.

She suggested the account claiming that the sex was consensual was “the only answer he could possibily give.”

Defending barrister Jonathan Goldberg told the jury: “Unless you sleep under marital bed you can never know what is going on sexually between two people. The most bizarre practices are occurring and the most unlikely poeple are indulging in those practices.”

He referred to the case as “Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark”, and questioned the complainant’s decision to leave the country rather than attend trial.

He also said there was no evidence to support prosecution claims that the numerous retractions issued by the woman were not genuine.