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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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A woman who claims she
was pack raped at Mount Maunganui 16 years ago hid from her attackers and
acted out of character after the alleged assaults, a former colleague told
the High Court at Wellington today. The two women were
working at Mount Maunganui for a Hamilton-based company in the summer of
1989. The woman, then aged
20, has alleged she was gang-raped by five men in January 1989 after being
lured into an empty building on the promise of a date with a man she believed
she shared a mutual attraction with. Four of those men are
now charged with rape and abduction. The fifth man has never been identified.
The accused men - whose identities are suppressed by the court - admit they
had group sex with the woman but say it was consensual. The former colleague
told the court today the two women met the men through their work at Mount
Maunganui. The alleged victim had
won a bet with one of the men and her reward was he would set up a lunch date
with the man she liked. However, after she
returned from the lunch date the woman's behaviour had changed, the former
colleague said. She was no longer bubbly and friendly. "There were no
jokes ... there was no chattiness. "She was not her
usual self, she seemed withdrawn, she didn't seem happy." The two women got on as
colleague but weren't close friends, she said. "We didn't have
the kind of relationship that I would ... say 'what's wrong?'. She kept her
private life to herself." Two of the men had
regularly visited the woman at work before the lunch date, she said. Afterwards they only
visited on a couple of occasions. On one occasion both
women had been at work when the men arrived but her colleague indicated that
she did not want to see them. "I went outside
and told (them) she wasn't there." The man the woman had
liked had visited the motel the woman was staying in over the summer a day or
two after the lunch date. "She made an excuse
and went into the bedroom or toilet. It was not how she would normally
act." Shortly after the lunch
date the woman had taken off unexpectedly, not returning for several days. "I would say it
was out of character. I was surprised. I thought she must have had a good
reason to leave abruptly". 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 |
