Tea Ropati is defending six sex charges. Photo / Martin Sykes
Tea Ropati is defending six sex charges. Photo / Martin Sykes
KEY POINTS:
A woman who alleges she was raped by former Kiwi rugby league player Tea Ropati said today that an "honourable man" would have sent her home in a taxi because she was so drunk.
In Auckland District Court, Ropati, 42, has denied six sex charges, including one ofrape, arising from events at a bar and at a park in the early hours of June 15, 2006.
The Crown case is that the woman had had too much alcohol to have been able to consent to any sexual connection, but the defence has argued that she was a willing partner.
In cross-examination on the second day of the trial, defence counsel Gary Gotlieb asked the woman how Ropati would have known that what was happening was not consensual.
"I was in no position to consent, I had had too much alcohol," she said.
"Any honourable man would have put me in a taxi and sent me home."
Asked if Ropati had failed the test of an honourable man, the woman replied: "Beyond that, he's a rapist."
The woman said she could not recall any of the alleged sexual activity at The Whiskey bar in inner city Ponsonby because of her level of intoxication.
She remembered waking suddenly in Ropati's car in nearby Victoria Park and being in pain, while Ropati's "angry, twisted face" was above her.
Mr Gotlieb suggested that she must still have been aware of what was happening at the bar as she had bought five rounds of drinks using her eftpos card, for which she needed to enter her pin.
"I was functioning, but drunk," she said.
The woman's sister-in-law told the court the complainant arrived home about 3am distressed.
"She was just sobbing, sobbing, sobbing and saying, `Something bad has happened to me'," the sister-in-law said.
While the complainant's brother went to call the police, the sister-in-law held her.
"She couldn't even stand up," she said.
"I helped her to her bed and she rolled into a ball. She had full on panics. She did not calm down at all. In some parts she was not making sense."
