Allegations of Sexual
Abuse in NZ |
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NZ Herald A claim of rape in the street made
by a 39-year-old woman - described as "rotten" drunk at the time by
the judge - has been thrown out of court after her evidence at the trial of
the teenager she accused. Two days after the July 2006 incident,
the woman made a second statement to the police saying she had consented to
the late-night sex with a youth she did not know. The consent statement was repeated
in her depositions evidence and the Crown proceeded to trial on the basis
that she was too drunk to have given a proper consent, the Christchurch Court
News website reported yesterday. But four-and-a-half hours into the
Christchurch District Court trial of Joshua Allan Schooner in front of Judge
Philip Moran and a jury, prosecutor Brent Stanaway decided the Crown would
proceed no further. Judge Moran agreed and discharged
Mr Schooner, a 21-year-old labourer. He told the court Mr Schooner had
arrived at court as an innocent man and would leave as an innocent man. He said the woman had later rationalised
the sex-in-the-street encounter by saying, "It's not something I would
do. I'm not like that". "When she is sober, she is no
doubt a very proper and moral and well behaved lady, but people do strange
things when they are drunk. She was rotten, and who knows? "We can't run the risk of
letting this man be convicted of a rape charge which in the end is
speculative," Judge Moran said. The woman had told how she
regularly went to the suburban bar and drank heavily with a group of friends.
She had regularly walked home "in drunken states". On that day, she had drunk a
mixture of bourbon, and then wine at home, and then beer in the evening at
the bar. She set off "very, very drunk" for the 20 minute walk home
late at night. She could recall little of the
journey that led to an encounter with Mr Schooner and sex on the concrete
step outside a dentist's surgery in suburban Christchurch. Mr Schooner said in a video
statement to the police that he had been approached by her in the street and
she had "pashed" him. "She wanted me to." He noticed that she was crying as
they sat together afterwards, though she says he ran off straight away. The woman told the court she had
not consented and she would not have consented. She had a stoma bag taped on
her stomach at the time because of surgery five months before the incident.
She was embarrassed about it, and did not even let her husband see her body
when the bag was in place. Defence counsel Michael Knowles
pointed to the second statement she made to police two days after her rape
complaint, in which she said: "I was walking down xxxx Road. A male who
was unknown to me asked me for sex. I agreed by saying yes." At the trial she denied
consenting, and said she was scared and traumatised and did not recall making
that second statement. She said the first thing she recalled of the encounter
was being on the cold concrete step, with a man on top of her, and saying no. She said the man had got off her a
few seconds after she said no. The other defence counsel, Marcus
Zintl, told the court in the opening, that Mr Schooner had stopped as soon as
he realised the woman had withdrawn her consent. Both Mr Schooner and the
woman had been drinking beforehand. "Drunken consent is still consent
even if it is soon regretted afterwards." After the woman's evidence, Mr
Stanaway told the court: "Having regard to the position we have now
reached, and the crown's inability to rebut the defence of consent or
reasonable belief in consent, I accept it is inappropriate for me to proceed
further."
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