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Allegations
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One of four men accused
of a pack-rape at Mount Maunganui 16 years ago will testify he had sex with
the then 20-year-old woman after the alleged attack, Wellington High Court
heard today. The woman has told the
court the man visited her at work and at the motel she was staying in over
the summer of January 1989 twice after the alleged rape. The woman, who was
working for a Hamilton-based company in the Bay of Plenty for six weeks over
the 1988/89 New Year period, has said the man's intimidatory tactics
prevented her from going to police and reporting the incident. Under cross examination
by the man's lawyer, Bill Nabney, the woman denied his client had visited her
because she had called him and asked him to. "I never called
him," she told the court. The man would later
testify that he had consensual sex with the woman at the motel, Mr Nabney
said. "That would be an
outright lie," she said. The woman has admitted
writing her hometown address and phone number in the man's notebook, but said
she gave him her details before the alleged attack. Mr Nabney suggested she
had written in the notebook after the man visited her motel. "That's a
lie," she repeated. The woman alleges she
was raped by five men in January 1989 in an empty building she had been lured
to on the false pretence of a lunch date with the man after they developed
what she considered a mutual attraction. The man and three
others are now accused of rape after the woman, who now lives in Australia,
laid a complaint with police in April 2004. The fifth man has never
been identified or charged. The men, who are also
charged with abduction, admit having sex with the woman but say it was
consensual and deny she was restrained. Court suppression
orders prevent identification of the men or their past and present
occupation. The woman alleges over
a period of an hour-and-a-half she was restrained, raped, forced to perform
oral sex and brutally violated by one man with his fingers and another with a
large object. Details of that object are also suppressed. Now 37-years-old and
married with three children, the woman broke down yesterday as she recounted
the incident 16 years later. Under cross examination
the woman has continually maintained she did not consent to group sex with
the men. She often asked defence lawyers to clarify or repeat questions;
asking one to introduce himself to her. "You know who I
am," she told him. The trial before
Justice Ronald Young and the jury of four men and eight women is expected to
take up to three weeks. |
