Keat disputes date that affair ended

THE military commander facing a court martial on charges stemming from an affair with a subordinate has admitted to a sexual relationship, but said it ended before becoming her boss.

Commodore Kevin Keat is facing eight charges relating to the relationship.

It is alleged he bullied the woman, failed to disclose their relationship during security vetting, instructed her to lie on her security clearance, and threatened her daughter’s military career.

At the end of the second day of his trial at Trentham Military Camp yesterday, the first 20 minutes of a two-hour recorded interview with the Military Police was shown, in which Keat admitted sleeping with the woman, whose name is suppressed.

He said a sexual relationship began in 2008 – as the woman has alleged – but said it was over long before December 2012, when she claimed it ended. He later termed the sex ‘‘a mistake’’, and said he began to feel guilty about cheating on his wife. After that, the relationship was just a friendship – for the most part.

He had mostly ended it by the time he was deployed to East Timor in 2009. ‘‘I got a guilty conscience. I saw the post to Timor as a good forced and natural break.’’

However, when he returned, there were more ‘‘flings’’ until about March 2010, he said, and again later that year at a military conference in Palmerston North. He did not take up his position as assistant chief of personnel until the end of 2010.

Earlier, a former colleague of the woman, who worked at the Defence Force between 2009 and 2011, recalled seeing Keat’s car in the woman’s driveway on occasions, and overheard the pair making arrangements outside work hours.

When they were carpooling to and from work, the woman would often talk to Keat on speaker phone, the colleague said. In one call, they booked a motel room ‘‘in town overnight’’.

Most of the contact he heard or witnessed was before Keat took up the assistant chief of personnel role, the man said.

Keat’s former secretary, Melinda Bulman, also told the court the woman would call the commodore ‘‘up to five-plus’’ times a day, and had unrivalled access to his office.

Ms Bulman, who managed Keat’s diary, said if she did not know where to find her boss she would call the woman.