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The Dominion Post
August 29, 2002
Women lied for ride home with police
Two Wainuiomata women called Upper Hutt police claiming they had been abducted
and sexually violated so they could get a ride home, Upper Hutt District
Court was told yesterday.
Keeva Marie Thomson, 19, unemployed and Sheena-Sue Adamson, 17, also
unemployed, pleaded guilty to charges of falsely claiming they were detained
for sex. Both were sentenced to 80 hours of community service.
Police prosecutor Neil Ford said Thomson and Adamson had been picked up in
Wainuiomata by people they knew and taken to an Upper
Hutt address on August 8.
There was some sexual activity at the address but it was consensual, he said.
The women had a falling out with their hosts and found they had no way to get
home. They ended up at a nearby service station.
Mr Ford said the pair rang police at 3.50am
and told them they had been abducted from Wainuiomata and taken to the
address in Upper Hutt, where one of them was
sexually assaulted.
Uniformed police attended to the women, a police dog handler was called out
from Wellington
and two CIB detectives were called.
The pair were taken to the Upper Hutt police
station and interviewed separately. Thomson began giving a written statement
on the incident. Halfway through, she admitted her story was false.
Adamson admitted the story was untrue while she was giving a verbal statement
at 6.15am.
Mr Ford said Adamson said they did not know why they had rung police and told
them lies, but they did need a ride home. She apologised for wasting police
time.
Defence counsel Reg Newell said both women were young and very immature. He
said the publicity likely to follow their court appearance would be
humiliating and it was unlikely either would offend again. "It goes
without saying both of those people will have learned a bitter lesson."
Sentencing them, Judge John Walker said false complaints to police were a
feature of his days at Upper Hutt District Court. "You have brought this
behaviour into a place where it's already a problem."
Complaints of this nature had to be dealt with by sentences of community
service, he said. "You have cost the community and it's time for you to
pay it back."
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