A man who has committed to stand trial over the 1997 rape of two teenage girls at Echuca never faced court.

And the Office of Public Prosecutions is unable to explain why.

The girls had told police a man had broken into their bedrooms while they were sleeping and raped them.

A third girl, 17, reported that she had been indecently assaulted by an unknown intruder.

But in a confounding failure of the Victorian justice system as reported in The Age, the man’s twin rape charges were never presented in court.

“What either happened was the prosecution has given an extremely generous offer and traded two rapes for a guilty plea on indecent assault with no jail time, or it forgot about the rapes,” investigative reporter Richard Baker told Ross and John.

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