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Allegations
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Wellington: A second man
accused of pack-rape yesterday denied to the High Court at Wellington that he
had embellished his story to help his case. The 47-year-old is the
second of four men accused of raping a 20-year-old woman at Mount Maunganui
in January 1989 to give evidence. The identity of the
accused and many elements of the case are suppressed. The man, who was 31 at
the time, has pleaded not guilty to abduction, two counts of rape and two
counts of unlawful sexual connection. The court was told
yesterday the accused and the woman developed a mutual attraction for each
other after meeting through their work duties. The woman — now 37 and
living in Australia — alleges the men lured her on the promise of a lunch
date with him to an empty building, where she was restrained, raped, forced
to perform oral sex and brutally violated. The four men say it was
consensual group sex the woman had orchestrated. The accused told the
court yesterday he had visited the woman at her work following the incident
and at a motel she was staying in with a colleague over the summer. “[She] told me she
wanted to see me and invited me around to where she was staying. “She met me at the
door, led me through to the bedroom in the back of the unit and we had sexual
intercourse.” The woman then told him
she was going away for a few days, the man said. He also said that
several days before the alleged pack-rape, he had a conversation of a sexual
nature with the woman in a bar. However, Crown
prosecutor Mark Zarifeh said neither of those two matters had been put to the
woman by defence lawyers when she testified. “I suggest you have
added these details to embellish and help your case,” Mr Zarifeh said. “I don’t have to
embellish what I am saying,” the accused told him. “I am telling you the truth.”
The man said the woman
did not know he was married at the time of the lunchtime rendezvous, but he
told her afterwards at the motel. “I don’t think [she]
had any interest in whether I was married.” The woman told the
court last week she had asked a mutual work associate to ask whether the
accused was married and help her set up a lunch date with him. She said she wrote her
contact details in Hamilton in the accused’s notebook — before the alleged
pack-rape. The man disputed this
and said she had written in his notebook when he had visited her at the
motel. He told the court the
work associate had telephoned him the morning of the incident and said the
woman wanted to have sex with him and one or two other men in the empty
building. “I was pretty keen.” The accused said he
told a fellow accused — his friend and colleague at the time — about the
lunchtime rendezvous. “He said he’d like to be involved as well.” He also said
“everything that happened in that [building] was consensual”. The woman was assertive
and would have voiced any unhappiness, he said. “[She] wouldn’t have
tolerated anything else. Anyone that knew [her] would know she would speak
up.” The trial before
Justice Ronald Young and a jury of eight woman and four men will continue today. |
