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Allegations of Abuse
in NZ |
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Tea Ropati - League Star accused
of rape |
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The Daily Telegraph (Australia) A woman has told a court how she
"woke up to being raped" by former Kiwi rugby league player Tea Ropati,
after she spent a boozy night out on the town in Auckland. Prosecutors allege Ropati - who
once played for the Australian club Newcastle - took advantage his alleged
victim who was so affected by alcohol that at times she was deeply asleep or
unconscious. Ropati has pleaded not guilty to
one charge of raping the woman in a car park in Auckland on June 15, 2006. He has also pleaded not guilty to
five other charges of unlawful sexual connection involving the same woman at
a nearby bar. In an Auckland court today, Crown
prosecutor Phil Hamlin asked the woman if she wanted to have sex with Ropati.
"Absolutely not," she
replied. The rape is alleged to have
occurred in the Victoria Park car park in central Auckland. Hamlin said the other offences included
two earlier attempts by Ropati to perform oral sex on the woman in a back
room of The Whiskey Bar in nearby Ponsonby. The woman, a public relations
account manager, said she went to the bar with friends about 11pm on June 14,
having been to two other bars and a fashion store opening earlier in the
evening. She said she was introduced to
Ropati, whom she had never met before, and her memory of what happened next
was "a bit sketchy", but there was "a flirtation, some
kissing". "I guess I was pretty drunk
and I guess I was probably thinking at some stage I should go home," she
told the court. Hamlin told the court that the
woman had also shared cocaine and marijuana with friends earlier in the
evening. She said she had no recall of
alleged sexual activity with Ropati inside The Whiskey Bar, saying her last
significant memory from that site was of going to a nearby carpark with
Ropati. She said her next memory was
"when I woke up to being raped". "I remember being in the
car," she said. "I remember coming to. I
remember an angry face over me. It was an angry, twisted face. I remember
being in pain." She said she challenged Ropati
over what he had done and he swore at her, before he drove her back to
Ponsonby and threw two $20 notes at her for a taxi home. Hamlin said Ropati had been
flirting with a number of women at the Whiskey Bar. "He was very busy,"
Hamlin said. "One witness described him as
being on the prowl." Defence counsel Gary Gotlieb said
Ropati did not deny meeting the woman at the bar or driving her to Victoria
Park. But jurors had to consider whether
Ropati was "a predator taking advantage of a drunk woman who could not
consent, or was he a creature of circumstances, where unknown to him the
complainant and her friends had been out binge drinking, taking cocaine and
marijuana?" Gotlieb said security footage in
the bar showed the woman was not as incapacitated as the Crown had alleged,
and what happened at the park was consensual. The trial continues tomorrow. Ropati, 42, had interim name
suppression before it lapsed today. As a five-eighth, Ropati played for
Newcastle, the English side St Helens and the Auckland Warriors. |
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