Woman acquitted of unlawful sex

It took more than a year and a jury trial to find that an Upper Hutt woman had not willingly had sex with the 14-year-old son of her lesbian lover. She told police she was raped. However, police preferred to believe the boy, who accused her of flirting with him, rubbing herself against him and helping him to take off her underwear.

The woman, whose name is suppressed, faced three charges of sexual connection with a young person and one of wilfully attempting to pervert the course of justice for making a statement to police about being raped.

A Wellington District Court jury yesterday took more than five hours to find her not guilty, and the charges were dismissed.

She said she had tried to make sense of what happened on April 24 last year. She has passed out on the couch after a party.

She readily admitted drinking, and offering alcohol to the boy and his friends. She had talked to him about safe sex.

She was the long-term partner of his mother, and saw him as a stepson. But she woke to find the boy penetrating her and she says she froze.

After agonising over what to do, she sought the advice of a friend. Eventually, she decided she needed to go to the police, both to get help for herself, but also for the boy.

Instead she found herself charged, and lost everything.

She split up with the boy’s mother over the accusation, and had to find a new home.

The couple had been engaged. She had saved for an engagement ring, for which she is still paying more than a year later.

Crown prosecutor Adele Garrick had told the jury she was ‘‘horny’’ and it led to a consensual sexual encounter. The next day she regretted it, and to rationalise it, she made up a false account, told her friends and partner, and it snowballed until she had to make a complaint to police.

Judge Ian Mill told the jurors they might not approve of the choices or lifestyles of the people involved, or may feel sorry for either the boy or the woman.

‘‘You may have opinions about young people having sex, or having alcohol, or supplying them with alcohol. Put those feelings to one side.’’

He said it was a difficult and unpleasant case with two very different accounts from both sides.

He warned the jurors they could not find the woman guilty of the attempt to pervert justice unless they found her guilty of having sex with the boy.

Outside court, her lawyer Michael Bott said police failed to do their job properly and he would be seeking costs.