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Allegations
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A relative of one of the
four men found guilty of pack-raping a woman 16 years ago at Mt Maunganui
says the jury got it wrong. The unnamed woman is
related to one of two accused men, aged 47 and 53, whose identities remain
suppressed by extensive court orders. The two men were
convicted along with Mt Maunganui businessman Peter Mana McNamara, 46, and
Tauranga fireman Warren Graham Hales, 40, of abducting and raping a
20-year-old woman in January 1989. The relative told
National Radio yesterday the families had been absolutely stunned by the
verdicts and were sticking by the men. "Nothing has changed about who
they are and how we feel about them." The victim, now 37, –
who lives in Australia with her husband and three children - lodged a
complaint with police in April 2004 while on holiday in New Zealand. She told the court the
men lured her into a hut on the pretext of having a lunch date with one of
the unnamed men, but once there she was bound and raped. The men maintained
the woman had orchestrated consensual group sex and denied restraining her. However, the relative
said emotion had overtaken the evidence and she described the judge as a
conductor of an orchestra. "I don't want to criticise the jury
process...but it's dodgy when you get into situations like this." The families' lives had
been thrown into chaos during the trial and they had felt ostracised, she
said. "It's a hideous
experience. It has exposed parts of someone's life you would never usually
hear about. It's an unreal environment you enter into." However, the family had
also been shown compassion and support from many friends and family, she
said. "My family are
devastated. We're a very, very close family. It just takes one of our special
people out of our lives for a while." Victoria University law
lecturer Yvette Tinsley said jurors on the trial would have faced a difficult
and draining job. Sexual cases were
especially hard for jurors and it was important counselling was offered.
"Certainly in sexual offending trials it's very difficult. Some of the material
you see and hear can be quite distressing." Dr Tinsley - who has
carried out extensive research on juries - said most jurors were
conscientious and aware of the seriousness of the job. While emotion was
impossible to ignore, people were usually able to put it to one side when
deliberating. "Juries don't make
these decisions lightly. They would not hand down a verdict like that
lightly." When the verdict was
delivered in the High Court at Wellington earlier this week, the four men's supporters
wept and wailed. Dr Tinsley said the jury would have found that hard to deal
with. "I imagine that would have been incredibly stressful and awful. I
suppose that they never really know. They can only believe that on the
evidence they don't have reasonable doubt." Women's support groups
have said the verdict might encourage other victims of historic rapes and
sexual crimes to come forward. |
