HB artist's rape charge thrown out

Doug Laing
Napier sculptor and artist Paratene Matchitt greeted his wife Susana with flowers in his home and studio in Napier after a judge threw out allegations of date-rape made by a woman eight months ago.
The couple had called it quits not long before Mr Matchitt was charged with rape in October last year. But in an ironic turn of events, the case brought them back together and they married in January.
Dinner last night and flowers today were the first steps in getting on with their lives.
Both said they were angered by the police inquiry and the time it took for it to get to court, where a judge yesterday decided there was no evidence sexual intercourse had taken place and none that the woman had been drugged, as alleged.
In the High Court in Napier, Judge Forrest Miller discharged the 72-year-old artist after hearing a short pre-trial application by defence counsel and Auckland-based barrister, Adam Couchman, that there was insufficient evidence for the case to go to trial.
Mr Matchitt had faced one charge of rape, one of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and one of indecent assault relating to incidents alleged to have happened in a 29-year-old woman's home in Hastings after meeting at an art exhibition, and dining together in a Napier restaurant, on the night of October 14.
Mr Matchitt accepts the basic facts of the woman's claims, that he followed her home and they slept the night together, but said she readily accepted his invitation to dinner and the events that followed.
In the morning, he says, he had a cup of tea with her and they arranged to meet again. He was introduced to a woman who was visiting the complainant, and left with no suggestion there was a problem.
A few days later, police arrived at his Ahuriri house. His next night was spent in a cell at the Napier Police Station and he was a remand inmate at Hawke's Bay Prison for six weeks, before being granted bail, pending a trial which should have started this week.
But yesterday Justice Miller ruled there was no evidence on which a jury could properly conclude sexual intercourse had taken place, nor that the woman had been drugged. Samples taken after the complaint was lodged about 16 hours after the time of the alleged offences did not reveal the presence of a stupefying agent.
"These are serious charges, and I recognise that date rape is a particularly despicable crime," the judge said.
"Nonetheless, I conclude that the jury could not properly convict on this evidence, because a conclusion that she was drugged would be speculative."
The woman had claimed she did not want Mr Matchitt to go to her home and said she had little recollection of what had happened between when they left the restaurant and when she awoke the next morning with Mr Matchitt, both naked in her bed.
The officer in charge of the inquiry, Detective Emmet Lynch, of Napier CIB, said the complainant and the police were "very disappointed" with the outcome.
"Unfortunately, in cases of this nature, scientific evaluation centred on the detection of disabling substances is a field which is extremely difficult to both analyse and interpret," he said.
"All that police can ask for, to negate repeats of this nature in future inquiries, is for complainants to immediately contact their medical practitioner or the police to provide early specimens if there is any suspicious occurrences whatsoever."
Mr Matchitt believes police closed their minds on the case because he had previously been convicted of a sex offence, being sentenced in 2001 to 2 1/2years jail for sexually violating a 16-year-old girl.
The police case had already been presented in a depositions hearing when "the wheels fell off" after results of tests were received about three months ago.