Jury considering lazy river touching counts

ONE lawyer says ‘‘lightning doesn’t strike twice’’. The other contends ‘‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear’’.

Yesterday, an Invercargill District Court jury retired to consider their verdict in the case of a man facing 13 charges of indecently assaulting six different girls, all under the age of 12, in the lazy river at Alpine Aqualand, in Queenstown, on June 8, 10 and 14, 2017.

Crown prosecutor Riki Donnelly told them if lightning struck ‘‘three, four, five or six times, you can’t be sure that it’s an accident’’.

Counsel Hugo Young contended the prosecution case was ‘‘tissue thin’’.

‘‘They’re weak individually, and they’re weak collectively.

‘‘Six tissuethin cases does not add up to anything.’’

Mr Donnelly said the key questions for the jury, if they believed the girls were touched as described, were the intent and indecent elements.

‘‘If you consider there was intentional touching in the areas [between the knees and ribs] of children, who this person did not know . . . it won’t take you long, the Crown says, to conclude that it was indecent.’’

While identification was an issue for the defence, Mr Donnelly contended it was ‘‘implausible’’ there was another man in the pool on all three dates the defendant had allegedly touched the children, going ‘‘round and round and round the lazy river’’.

‘‘It wasn’t a coincidence.’’ The man coincided his visits to the lazy river with the busiest time of day for children to be present and touched the children when they were not in the company of a caregiver or adult, he said.

Whether or not a child thought the touching was accidental ‘‘is actually not the primary issue for you’’.

‘‘If they think it was an acci dent [it] doesn’t mean it was.

‘‘He was in there [the lazy river] for a long time because he wanted to do exactly what he was doing.

‘‘What are the chances of lightning striking six times?

‘‘When you stand back and look at the whole picture . . . you can be sure the charges are proven beyond reasonable doubt.

‘‘Each and every one of them.’’ Mr Young, however, said the jury could believe the defendant when he told police any touching he did was accidental and that he was not acting in an indecent way.

‘‘There was no sexual motive behind what he was doing in the pool.’’

He said there was a ‘‘real question mark’’ over who ‘‘the man’’ was on each occasion the children alleged they were touched and many descriptions of him were ‘‘quite wrong’’ when compared to the defendant.

The children were all playing in the lazy river — running with and against the current, standing still and playing games, Mr Young said.

‘‘Accidental contact was bound to occur and did in fact . . . on a number of occasions.’’

He said where the children alleged they were touched would occur when they came in to contact with the man’s swimming stroke.

He suspected some complainants had identified the wrong person; one conceded the touch was accidental; and in some cases children had been influenced by what others said, or what they had heard.

‘‘The defence maintains that the number of complainants has been [influenced] by the talk and the news reports.

‘‘You can’t be sure the defendant did all of those things.

‘‘Whatever he did was clearly accidental.

‘‘He was just swimming.

‘‘I say that you will find him not guilty on all of the charges,’’ Mr Young said.