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Allegations of Abuse
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Tea Ropati - League Star accused
of rape |
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NZ Herald Jurors in Auckland hearing six sex charges against former
Kiwi rugby league player Tea Ropati retired today to consider their verdicts. The jury of seven men and five women retired at 1pm on the
seventh day of the trial in Auckland District Court. Ropati, 42, has denied three charges of sexual violation,
including one count of rape, and three charges of attempted sexual violation. The charges arose from incidents at a Ponsonby bar and at
Victoria Park in the early hours of June 15, 2006, involving a a 36-year-old
woman. The Crown argued that Ropati took advantage of the woman,
who was so intoxicated that she could not have consented to sexual activity
with him. The defence denied that rape occurred because Ropati
stopped short of having full sex with the woman as he felt guilty on account
of his wife and that the sexual activity that did take place was consensual. In his closing argument, Ropati's lawyer Gary Gotleib said
the complainant's memory could not be relied on. He called into question the Crown's portrayal of Ropati as
a predator looking for sex. Mr Gotleib said the complainant and the Crown were putting
"spin on what had occurred at the Whisky Bar". He asked the jury at Auckland District Court to consider
how Ropati would have known that the woman was in the state of intoxication. Ropati would not have been aware that the woman had been
drinking elsewhere for six hours before the pair met, he said. Ropati had not plied her with alcohol in the bar. He pointed to the testimony of one of her friends that she
was "stringing her sentences perfectly okay" and to the fact that
the bar person was happy to continue serving her. Evidence showed the woman was someone who knew what she
wanted, Mr Gotlieb said. She was not a teenager, but "an in-your-face young
middle-aged person who knows her own mind". "This is a woman who knows how to look after
herself," he said. "She's a big girl and she's embarrassed about what
happened." Crown prosecutor Phil Hamlin agreed that the woman had
been flirting and laughing with Ropati in the bar. But she later became sleepy and unresponsive when the pair
went to a back room where some of the alleged sexual offending took place. Mr Hamlin said all the evidence presented in court pointed
to consent not being given. The woman remembered being woken up in pain in Ropati's
car in Victoria Park, where the alleged rape took place, and Ropati's
"angry" face above her. Mr Hamlin said injuries to her genital area showed blunt
force trauma not consistent with consensual sex. |
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