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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse in NZ |
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A woman has gone on
trial accused of making false allegations of rape against police in what
prosecutors say was a bid to derail charges she was facing at the time. The 44-year-old
appeared in the Hamilton District Court yesterday facing two charges of
making false allegations against police. She pleaded not guilty
and maintains the rapes and violation she alleged did occur. The woman, whose name
and details are suppressed, was charged in December 2003 with theft, using a
document and burglary after police found other people's bank cards at her
home. Two months after the
arrest, she made allegations of rape and sexual violation against the officer
who charged her and a female non-sworn member of the police who searched her. Crown prosecutor Simon
Moore told the court the woman had made up the allegations to derail the
charges police had laid against her. Judge Robert Spear
heard that police searched the woman's home on December 9, 2003, and took her
to the police station for questioning. The constable dealing
with her, who has since left the force, asked the station's watchhouse
officer, a non-sworn member of the police, to search her because there were
no sworn female officers available. The man, whose name and
details are suppressed, told the court the woman had asked to go to the
toilet but he had said she needed to be searched first. By the time the
watchhouse officer was free to carry out the search the woman had wet
herself. The watchhouse officer,
whose details are also suppressed, said she arrived to do the search and
found the woman standing in a disabled persons' toilet. "The defendant
wetting herself had obviously just occurred and he [the constable] had taken
a backward stance, shocked by it," the watch-house officer said. She said she took the
sobbing woman into the toilet and shut the door, where the defendant took off
her socks, shoes and jeans before asking to go to the toilet. The woman sat on the toilet,
putting her fist into her groin before moving her hand up under her shirt,
the woman said. She was suspicious so
asked the woman to take her top off. She then found a white
handkerchief in her hand containing bank cards which did not belong to her. She put the woman's wet
clothes into a bag and gave her police overalls to put on. The constable then took
her home. On December 11, 2003,
the woman faced charges in court. Her lawyer then, Tim Clark, gave evidence
yesterday that she told him there that she had been pressured to make a
statement, had been searched by a non-sworn member of the police, had been
made to stand naked and had wet herself. But she made no allegations of rape
or sexual violation. Then in February the
woman contacted him and made the allegations of rape and sexual violation. Mr Clark said that in
an interview at his office, she said the watchhouse officer had violated her
during the search and the constable had been to her house four times since
she was charged, threatening her and sexually violating and raping her. The former officer
yesterday told the woman's present lawyer, Mike Robb, that he left the police
last year because he was concerned that the force was changing the way he
viewed people. He said he was having psychological counselling. He knew nothing of the
woman's allegations against him until May last year. He
said he was either at home or at work on the days the woman alleges she was
raped. |
