Riverhead trial: convicted rapist admits to being with the victim on the night of the assault

Colin Jack Mitchell, 59, facing charges relating to the abduction of a woman from Ponsonby. She was later found at the Riverhead Quarry.

A convicted rapist, who appeared as a witness in a quarry assault trial at the High Court, has admitted to being with the victim on the night of the incident.

But the man, who has interim name suppression, denied abducting the woman or to beating and sexually violating her.

He was called as a witness in the trial of Colin Jack Mitchell, who is facing charges of kidnapping, causing grievous bodily harm and assaulting a woman with intent to sexually violate her.

Mitchell, a truck driver, is alleged to have kidnapped a 23-year-old woman from Grey Lynn in the early hours of February 26 last year, driven her 25km to a stone quarry in Riverhead and assaulted her.

The victim had attended the Gay Pride parade in Ponsonby, where the witness admitted to have met her.

The Court saw CCTV footage of them walking from the Mobil station at the junction of Ponsonby and Karangahape Rds, stopping briefly near a taxi, before proceeding on to the Family Bar and Club.

Another man was seen greeting the woman and the three of them entered the bar before the witness was seen leaving alone.

The witness described the woman as "pretty" with "long hair", and admitted that he was the man in the footage.

"I was trying to find her a taxi because she was a little bit drunk, but I ended up walking her to the Family Bar," he said.

The witness said both of them were intoxicated, but the woman insisted on meeting up with friends at the bar to continue partying.

He said the last time he saw the woman was when he left her at the bar that night.

Mitchell's lawyer Mark Ryan told the court the witness has had two historical convictions of male rapes female and abduction for sex in 2004.

Although the witness said he had asked the woman to have sex when they first met that evening, he said that he stopped when he found out how intoxicated she was.

Another witness, Neil Bowman, who is Mitchell's work manager, told the Court he met Mitchell who was washing his silver Ford Mondeo at the work premises on the Sunday after the alleged incident.

The Crown alleged that the woman was approached on her way home by Mitchell in his car, and was driven to the quarry where she was hit in the head and sexually assaulted.

The trial before Justice Fitzgerald and a jury will hear evidence from 58 witnesses and expected to last about three weeks.