Violations alleged from age 11

A WOMAN who claims she was repeatedly raped by her stepfather from the age of 11 said he would later hide her contraceptive pill.

‘‘It was weird; it was like he wanted me to be pregnant,’’ the complainant told police when she made a statement in November 2016.

‘‘He would say I looked pregnant.’’

The man accused of abusing her for four years from 2010 is on trial before the Dunedin District Court after denying three charges of rape, four of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and one of indecent assault.

Three of the charges, one of each offence, are representa tive, alleging multiple instances of sexual assaults.

He has name suppression until at least the end of trial.

The complainant — now an adult — told the police in her video interview she was first raped by her stepfather on her 11th birthday.

She remembered being in bed after a celebratory dinner and being woken by the defendant in her room in the early hours of the morning.

‘‘I thought he was sleepwalking or something,’’ she said.

The complainant said his intentions soon became clear.

‘‘He closed my door and shoved me back on to my bed,’’ the woman said.

‘‘He was just towering over me, holding me down.’’

The defendant allegedly told her to keep quiet about the incident before leaving the room.

Afterwards, the woman said she washed her bloodied bed sheets and put them in a plastic bag under the bed.

She showered the following morning and hid the sheets under rubbish in a skip outside the house, the said.

‘‘I just didn’t know what to do. I was in shock. I was just really confused from what had happened,’’ she told police.

Crown prosecutor Robin Bates said there were also multiple occasions on which the man would force his stepdaughter to perform sex acts on him.

One alleged incident took place when the complainant was home from school with a vomiting bug.

The complainant’s mother had left the house to buy her ice blocks when the man allegedly forced himself on her.

When the woman returned, Mr Bates said, the man ‘‘pulled up his shorts, went into the lounge and acted as if nothing had happened at all’’.

While there were several rapes, the complainant said there were more fleeting episodes, too.

‘‘He sometimes would just come into my room at night and just grope me and leave without saying anything . . . just real gross,’’ she said.

‘‘He would sometimes just sit on the end of my bed and stare at me. He wouldn’t say anything, he’d just stare.’’

The complainant explained why she approached police a couple of years after the alleged ordeal ended: ‘‘Just because I thought it would be something to create closure for me and put him away for what he’s done.’’

Mr Bates said the woman had kept the secret to herself until May 2015 when her friend found her in tears outside a party.

She was eventually persuaded to see a counsellor and then made disclosures to her mother before informing the authorities.

Defence counsel Andrew Dawson said his client ‘‘absolutely, categorically’’ denied the claims.

‘‘Once you hear all the evidence . . . fully apply your common sense, I believe you’ll quite easily conclude the only verdicts you can bring in are ones of not guilty,’’ he told the jury.

The trial, before Judge Kevin Phillips and a jury of six men and six women, is scheduled to last four days.