The accused police officer, who has name suppression, is on trial in the Auckland District Court. Photo / File
The accused police officer, who has name suppression, is on trial in the Auckland District Court. Photo / File
"I should have been safe, I was with police colleagues," a policewoman who was allegedly raped by another officer has told a court.
The charged cop, who has interim name suppression, was arrested after allegations emerged from the night of February 4 and early hours of the next day as several officers were deployed to help patrol Waitangi Day events.
He is accused of indecently assaulting and sexually violating a workmate at a Kerikeri motel last year. His trial in the Auckland District Court began on Wednesday.
"I was extremely distressed. And I was trying to work out what was going on," she said.
"He was telling me 'not to do this' to him ... 'What are you doing to me? Don't do this'. He just kept saying the same thing. He just kept going at me, he just wouldn't shut up."
The complainant was able to record one minute and 50 seconds of audio in the aftermath of the incident on her cellphone, which has been played to the court.
"Don't even give me that sh*t," the complainant can be heard saying.
"What shit?" the accused officer said.
"I've denied you earlier, and I've woken up to you f***ing me," she said crying.
"What do you want me to do?" the defendant said.
The alleged victim told the court: "I was fast asleep and I woke up to this, so I don't have a clear concept of that time or how long that time was."
She said the accused officer was "pretending that nothing had happened".
"My focus was working out what the f**k had happened and just trying to protect myself, it was just something I could do because I did not know what to do," she said of her decision to start a video recording.
She also took handwritten notes.
"I did not invite him into my room," she told the court.
Judge Evangelos Thomas is presiding over the trial. Photo / Sam Hurley
Because of her experience as a police officer, she said she was reluctant to go through the process of laying a sexual violence complaint.
"I don't want to be f**king here right now, I don't want to go down this path, but what happened to me shouldn't have happened and it wasn't right," she said.
"I don't want to have to go through this process but it's happened, so I guess that is the process that follows," she recalled thinking.
She said the medical examination of a sexual assault complainant sees the person "get treated like a specimen or a piece of meat".
Earlier in the day, the jury watched as CCTV caught the accused policeman "creeping" across the motel courtyard and into his alleged victim's bedroom.
At 2.34am on February 5, the defendant can be seen walking across the motel courtyard and slowly opening the door to the complainant's room.
The complainant told the court she "absolutely did not" hear him enter as she slept. The video also shows he did not knock.
"He's creeping and it's f**king disgusting," the female officer said through tears.
"First thing I knew was when I woke up to pain," she continued. "I was being told to be quiet by [the defendant]."
The alleged victim said the accused left the room and she sat on her bed in tears.
"I don't know anyone super well and I'm with a whole team of boys," she said. "I didn't think I could go and say anything so I just sat there crying on the bed."
CCTV from earlier in the night also shows lewd behaviour by several officers staying at the motel, including a senior sergeant getting naked in front of the beer-drinking group.
Then, just past midnight, the group begin to play a game of stripping as officers sitting in a circle in the courtyard begin to take their clothes off, the security footage shows.
However, amid the foolishness, one of the female officers was allegedly assaulted. The first incident occurred when her workmate allegedly put his hands down her shorts in one of the motel rooms, and later when she woke to find the same man lying behind her.
But the accused cop's lawyer, Paul Borich QC, claims any sexual contact was consensual.
He told the jury it was a "pre-arranged hook-up" and a case of regret about the night's events, not rape.
Police began investigating the incident on the morning of the incidents.
The accused officer has been stood down from the police and a separate employment investigation will be conducted, Auckland's Detective Superintendent Dave Lynch has said.
