Southland Times
October 30 2008

Jury told issue is one of who to believe

The jury in the trial of an Invercargill schoolteacher facing indecency charges was yesterday invited to work out for themselves what allegedly happened during the offending.

Paul Alexander Conner, 42, is on trial in the Invercargill District Court on one charge of doing an indecent act on an 11-year-old boy and three charges of doing indecent acts on another boy when he was aged between 11 and 13.

Conner's lawyer, Philip McDonald, said in his closing address yesterday if Conner had rubbed up against the boys as they had described, his body couldn't have been on the angle they said it was.

He invited the jury members to work out the angles for themselves when making their deliberations.

Conner's mother Jean Conner was the final witness to take the stand in the seven-day trial.

She said her son lived at the Bainfield Rd property where the offending was alleged to have taken place with herself, her husband, her daughter and grandson.

Mrs Conner said she had once seen Conner and a boy shooting each other with toy guns but had not seen him search the boy's body.

"I would be very angry if I ever saw that," she said.

Conner has denied allegations he touched the boys' private parts and that he rubbed up against the boys in a barn.

However, he had told police he had played a game with toy guns in which he frisked the boys for weapons, but without ever touching their private parts.

He had also put cuffs over their wrists so they couldn't produce any more guns, although he had denied the game had any slavery connotations.

Crown prosecutor Bill Dawkins and Conner's lawyer Philip McDonald both said in their closing addresses yesterday the issue came down to who was telling the truth.

Mr McDonald said the two boys had got together and made up the indecency allegations against Conner. There could have been "one thousand reasons" to make up the story, one being that Conner had been a disciplinarian to both when he taught them at New River Primary School, giving them reason to be resentful.

Mr Dawkins said it was the boys who were telling the truth. One of the boys had a good rapport with Conner by the time he went out to the farm and the other thought Conner was cool, he said.

Conner had gained control over the boys by disciplining them for their behaviour in class, which was one reason they had got the "special invite" to his farm, Mr Dawkins said.

Judge Kevin Phillips will sum up the case this morning before the jury retires to consider its verdict.