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The Press The trial of a prominent Canterbury
man on historical sexual-abuse charges will continue next week after
originally being scheduled to last just a few days. The man, whose identity is
protected by a raft of suppression orders, is alleged to have initiated sex
with the complainant when she was aged seven or eight and abused her until
she was about 17. On Monday in the Christchurch High
Court he denied eight counts of rape, one of sodomy, three charges of
indecent assault and three of inducing an indecent act. The abuse is alleged to have
started in a Christchurch hotel when he was visiting from his country
address. Abuse graduated to oral sex, then sodomy when she was 11 and regular
rapes from when she was about 13. Most of the abuse happened on
rural properties, at a ski club and in Christchurch. The man's defence counsel,
Jonathan Eaton, said his client admitted having consensual sexual intercourse
"on one single occasion" when the woman was "of age" --
about 16 or 17 -- but denied any sexual offending against her. Yesterday, another woman told the
court she believed the defendant had touched her inappropriately. She described how the man would
touch her in the crotch area when they were driving in a truck, using gear
changes as an excuse. Questioned by Eaton, she said she did
not believe it was an accident. "From what I can remember as
a child his hand would touch my crotch," she said. "You don't
change gear every few minutes. At the time I didn't like it." Earlier in the week, lawyer's
correspondence on compensation for the complainant was placed before the
jury. The letters handed up by Eaton
detail negotiations during 2004 and early 2005. The complainant told the court on
Wednesday that she withdrew from the compensation negotiations, telling the
police on August 19, 2004 that she had withdrawn her claim and later made a
police complaint about the alleged abuse. She said she did this because of
allegations that she was only doing it because she wanted a house and money.
That was unfair, she told the court. But Eaton's bundle of
correspondence showed that the negotiations had continued to May 2005 and he
put to her that her statement to the police about withdrawing was a bald lie.
She denied that. She said she did
not realise her lawyer had kept going when she thought she had stopped the
talks. "I got scared and I backed
off," she said, "I wanted just to tell the
truth. That's all I am doing. That's why I am here." She denied the accused man's claim
that they had had sex only once at a named location when she was 16 or 17, at
a time when she was infatuated with him and had initiated the contact. |
