Sex allegations not imagined: witness

SEXUAL allegations she made against a Central Otago man were not a result of her vivid imagination, a young woman said in the Dunedin District Court yesterday.

The witness, the last of four whose statements resulted in rape, sexual violation and indecent assault charges against the 61yearold man, was being challenged by the defence about the truthfulness of her evidence.

It was suggested to the woman she was ‘‘the organiser of this’’ and influenced the other complainants to come forward to police and say things about the man to help her case.

‘‘I came forward first but didn’t organise the others,’’ she said.

She denied suggesting to the other three complainants there was ‘‘strength in numbers’’.

‘‘I didn’t say that. Others said it to me. But I didn’t try to get more on board to boost the case against him,’’ the witness said in response to questioning by defence lawyer Bill Dawkins.

The defendant denies a total of 10 sexual abuse charges for offences alleged to have been committed mainly between 1999 and 2005. One incident is alleged to have occurred some time between 2006 and 2010.

At the start of the trial he faced 12 charges — seven alleging indecency with girls under 12, three of rape and two of unlawful sexual connection.

But two indecent assault charges were withdrawn earlier in the week and yesterday one of the two unlawful sexual connection charges was reduced to a charge of doing an indecent act.

The man denies all charges, the defence saying none of the alleged events happened.

The trial has been going for five days before Judge Michael Crosbie and the jury.

Crown counsel Robin Bates and Deborah Henderson expect the prosecution’s evidence to finish on Monday.

In their evidence given in videotaped interviews, the four complainants have all described an incident when all four had a sleepover at the man’s house when they were about 7 or 8. They said he played pornography on a TV in his bedroom and showed it to them. Then he made them get in his bed, take their clothes off and lie side by side, changing position to have turns lying next to him when he told them and touching them indecently.

Two complainants have accused him of raping them and they each described seeing him rape the other, in one case while he filmed what was happening.

The fourth complainant described her and one of the other girls lying naked on a towel on the man’s bed after having a shower and him rubbing baby powder on her ‘‘private area’’.

She also spoke of the man putting his hand under the bed covers and touching her genitals when she was sleeping in the house when she was older.

She ‘‘froze’’ and did not know what to do as her friend was asleep. But she then pretended to wake up, slowly, before getting out of bed and going to the bathroom, where she stayed for quite a while. The man was not there when she got back and her friend was awake.

‘‘I felt really violated and unsure and I knew it was wrong,’’ the witness said. She had not wanted to tell her friend what had happened.

But she had stayed at the house again about a week later although she made sure she was not around when the man came to collect her from her home. She later asked her father to take her to her friend’s place, where the defendant was angry with her for wasting his time and petrol.

Another friend was also there and later, when they were in the bedroom, she hid in the closet to put her night clothes on because she was afraid the defendant would come into the room while she was getting changed.

Mr Dawkins suggested it did not make sense for her to have asked her father to drive her to the house where she said the defendant had been touching her indecently a week earlier, but the witness said she still wanted to be the other girl’s friend although she did not want her to know what the man had done.

She agreed the girl knew about other things the witness mentioned, pornography on the man’s computer and a device connected to a hidden camera they found in the bathroom.

Asked whether there had been a lot of communication between her and the other complainants over the years, the witness said there had not. Although she had contacted them on Facebook because she knew she was going to talk to the police, they ‘‘had not exactly kept in touch’’.

She denied she had a vivid imagination and had imagined and said things that were not truthful.

To Mr Bates, the woman said she was telling the truth ‘‘and nothing but the truth. He did do those things’’.

❛ I didn’t try to get more on board to boost

the case against him