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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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The victim of an
alleged pack-rape 16 years ago today described how her attackers looked at
her "like a pack of dogs looking at raw meat". "There was no
respect, no friendliness," she told a Wellington High Court jury. "They had the kind
of smile you have when your lips curl up at the corners." The woman, who alleges
she was raped by five men in January 1989 at the age of 20, broke down as she
was forced to relive the incident today. She told how she was
lured to an empty building on the false pretence of a lunch date with a man
she liked. Four men, now aged
between 40 and 53, are on trial after the woman lodged the complaint with
police in April this year. The court was told yesterday
how the woman felt too intimidated by the men to report the incident at the
time. The four men each face
charges of rape and abduction. Two are also charged with unlawful sexual
violation and one is also charged with a second count of rape and unlawful
sexual violation. They have pleaded not
guilty to all charges. The fifth man has never
been identified or charged. Court orders prevent
the identification of the accused, and their past and present occupations. Taking the stand for the
second day, the woman - now 37 and married with three children - described
her shock when an associate of the man she liked took her, not to a cafe for
lunch, but to an empty building. Inside a mattress had
been placed on the floor and the man she liked was waiting with three others.
Another man was on a balcony outside. She was told to lie
down on the mattress. "I made a
conscious decision to comply with what was going to happen. "I was in a room
with two very large men and two men I didn't know. I thought I could get
beaten up." She was restrained with
her arms over her head while four of the men took turns raping her. One man
masturbated while he watched the others having sex with her. "What an animal
that (he) can stand there and masturbate while (his) mate rapes
somebody." One forced her to
perform oral sex on him and another painfully forced his fingers into her
vagina, she said. The woman began to cry
as she described how one man roughly penetrated her with a large object up to
20 times. Details of that object are suppressed. "I said the word
'no' over and over again," she told the court. The woman said she made
eye contact with the man on the balcony, who was watching through the window,
in a silent plea for him to help her. However, he didn't help
her. When the others left he came inside the building and raped her as well. "I said to him,
'they've ruined my life anyway, you might as well'. "That in no form
was permission to rape me, that was desperation." Asked about claims by
the accused it was consensual group sex, the woman replied: "It's
absolute rubbish, I did not agree to have sexual intercourse ... with anyone
in that room. The trial, before
Justice Ronald Young and a jury of four men and eight women, is expected to
take up to three weeks. |
