|
Allegations of Abuse
in NZ |
||
|
Tea Ropati - League Star accused of
rape |
||
|
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=1500916&objectid=10489588 NZ Herald The jury hearing six sex charges against former Kiwi rugby
league player Tea Ropati will resume their deliberations in Auckland District
Court tomorrow. The jurors retired at 1pm today to consider their verdicts
and about 5.30pm indicated to Judge Phil Gittos that they would not be able
to complete their task by tonight. The judge acknowledged that they had had a tiring day and
said they should adjourn at 6pm and return to court tomorrow morning. The jury of seven men and five women asked two questions
during the course of the afternoon. The first was for an explanation of the law relating to
charges of attempting to commit an offence. The second, much later in the day, was a possible
indicator that the jury was making slow progress. They asked what procedure they should adopt in their
deliberations and what order they should consider the charges. Judge Gittos said such issues were up to them to decide. 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 female
complainant who was 36 at the time. 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 a 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 closing arguments, defence counsel Gary Gotlieb asked
the jury to consider how Ropati would have known that the complainant was in
the state of intoxication that the Crown had argued she was. He said Ropati would not have been aware that the woman
had been drinking elsewhere for six hours before the pair met and 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
bar staff were happy to continue serving her. Mr Gotlieb said the evidence showed the complainant was a
woman who knew what she wanted. 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 by 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 inconsistent with consensual sex. |
||
