The group walked from their gym to go dancing at a bar in Central Wellington. Photo / File
WARNING: This story discusses sexual harm and may be upsetting.
A sportsman says he never touched three women inappropriately and that the pill he gave one of them which made her “impaired” was done so with her consent.
“I didn’t slap a butt. I didn’t squeeze a butt. I didn’t put my fingers up a butt. I didn’t touch her like, at all,” the sportsman told the Wellington District Court where he is on trial for indecent assault.
The man, who has name suppression, is also accused of aggravated wounding, and “stupefying” one of the women with an unknown pill with the intention of sexually assaulting her.
His lawyer Paul Knowsley described the allegations of touching breasts, and bottoms, unwanted kissing, and drugging during a gym Christmas party in 2020 as “fabricated”.
“[There was] clearly physical contact between the parties,” Knowsley told the jury on Friday. “That physical contact does not amount to indecent assault.”
Knowsley said his client gave the pill to the woman, who took it willingly.
“He had no intention of stupefying her or rendering her incapable of doing anything. Everything [he] did was with her consent.”
But the three complainants, one a teenager at the time, told the court earlier this week the sportsman touched the bottoms and breasts of two of them while walking from the gym that night to a central Wellington bar, and that at the bar he gave one an “unknown pill” which left her impaired.
The woman claimed he shoved the pill into her mouth after she refused it twice.
He is also alleged to have slapped the bottom of the teenager when he put her on a raised platform and asked her to dance for him. It’s alleged he later tried to kiss her.
In sometimes emotional testimony, the woman who was the teenager described to the court yesterday how the man asked her to dance for him and he later kissed her.
Knowsley put to the woman she had made up the accusation to support the complainant given the pill.
“No,” she told the court. “I know right from wrong and what he did was wrong.”
The man told the jury he recalled taking a pill that night that made him feel “good”.
He denied the encounter with the teenager and said his level of intoxication was so significant he could barely hold himself up, let alone lift another person onto a raised platform.
He also denied indecently touching the women, who also have name suppression, and said any physical contact would have been an accident.
The man said he couldn’t remember giving one of the complainants a pill until he was shown CCTV images from the bar during a police interview, that captured him putting it in the woman’s mouth.
It was only then he realised he’d given her the pill because he couldn’t remember much between bars.
Crown prosecutor Tamara Jenkin put to the man he had made self-serving statements and purposefully omitted details when he was questioned by police in 2021.
Jenkin said the man actively misled police when he was questioned about taking drugs that night, shaking his head at one point and stating he had no pills on him.
In response, he said he denied possessing the pills out of fear of reputational damage.
Other witnesses called by the man’s lawyer claimed two of the three women were heavily intoxicated at the gym party.
One witness, a co-director of the gym, said the teen complainant had told him they were on ecstasy that night, though not the woman who was given the pill later.
Jenkin asked if the man might have been mistaken, to which he said “no, I stand by my comment”.
The women deny being on party drugs during the end-of-year celebration.
They made initial complaints about the man to the gym which were investigated and later advanced to the police. The name of the gym is suppressed.
Another witness, the co-director of the gym who conducted the internal investigation, said she could not find evidence to support the drugging allegation and although it could have been possible there was unsolicited touching, she couldn’t be sure.
Morale changed in the gym when the allegations came to light, according to the co-owner, as many members had likened it to “a second home”.
The trial continues next week.
Hazel Osborne is an Open Justice reporter for NZME and is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. She joined the Open Justice team at the beginning of 2022, previously working in Whakatāne as a court and crime reporter in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.