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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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A teacher accused of
raping a seven-year-old girl at a Wellington primary school took the stand in
the Wellington District Court yesterday to deny the charges against him. The 43-year-old
teacher, whose name has been suppressed, is charged with twice raping the
girl in 1996, once in a school corridor and again in his classroom. Both rapes allegedly
occurred during the school day. The teacher is also
accused of molesting the girl in his home bathtub, shoving a couch on to her
foot, and kicking and bruising her. "I've never kicked
anyone, in the classroom or anywhere," he told jurors. Now 17, the alleged
victim says she only fully remembered and understood in recent years what had
happened to her as a child. On Tuesday, her mother
testified that she had found blood and what looked like semen in her
daughter's underpants but assumed they were the result of an injury suffered
when the girl fell while climbing a tree. Crown prosecutor Mark
O'Donoghue rested his case yesterday, after calling as his last witness a
female police detective who had arrested the teacher and interviewed him. In the video-taped
police interview, played for jurors yesterday, the teacher appeared nervous
and talkative but denied ever having hurt the girl. He told the detective
he did not understand why the girl would make such accusations. He said she had not
seemed to like him and had left his class part way through the school year
because she was unhappy. "Doing this is
vindictive," he said. |
