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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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The mother of a teenager
who says a teacher raped her when she was seven has denied they wrongly
linked a series of memories to reach the view she was raped. Giving evidence in
Wellington District Court yesterday, the woman said she remembered her
daughter pointing out blood and the general condition of her underpants as a
child, but at the time she thought it the after-effect of falling out of a
tree a month before. The name of the
teacher, 43, and his school are suppressed. He has denied two charges of
sexual violation by rape, one of indecent assault and two of assault. His
trial is expected to end this week. Defence lawyer Paul
Paino asked the mother why she did not consider the possibility of sexual
assault when she saw the underpants and her daughter told her the teacher had
lain on her. "He was a
respected teacher. I didn't think teachers did that sort of thing. It was
supposed to be a good school." The mother said that
when her daughter was 14 she was having trouble sleeping and talked to her
mother about her memories. The woman said from that, and her own recall, she
believed her daughter had been raped. The girl was so unhappy
at the school that she shifted to another. The girl, now 17, said
that, after having sex education, she was able to make sense of her memories
of the teacher lying on top of her and hurting her. She could not explain
an incident in which a girl, who at the time she thought was the teacher's
daughter, approached her at secondary school and repeated to her what the
teacher had said after he raped her. She said it was strange and disturbing
and she did not now know who the girl was. She agreed that she had
acted out stories and myths when she was a child, but said her memories were
real. "These are
definite memories, not fantasies. I remember the feeling of being raped. I
cannot have imagined it." |
