KEY POINTS:
An alleged victim of rape, for which a police recruit is now on trial, has taken the unusual step of asking for her name to be made public.
Complainants in sex crime cases receive automatic name suppression.
But yesterday, at the Christchurch District Court trial of her alleged
attacker, Jacqueline Howat, 29, asked Judge Murray Abbott to make a special order so she could be publicly named.
Judge Abbott made the order, but the reasons for it were suppressed. The recruit's name remains suppressed.
Ms Howat yesterday told how she thought she was going to die in the attack which took place in 2003 when she was working as a prostitute.
Her alleged attacker, now 33, was charged with choking and raping her after a routine fingerprint exercise during police training.
His prints were put into a crime database and allegedly matched those taken from the rape scene about two years earlier.
Ms Howat yesterday said when she was first approached on the street by a man offering $150 for sex she thought it was her lucky night.
"You would be lucky to get $80 to $100 from a client, and even then they barter you down. You never get $150 from a client."
The man seemed normal and knew how to approach a prostitute.
"I didn't get any bad vibes off him. He was polite enough. We got on really well I thought."
After going back to her home, and climbing through the window to unlock the door and let her client in, they talked for up to 45 minutes.
When he started rubbing her leg, Ms Howat took it as a sign to have sex and asked for the money up front.
"He stood up and put his hand in his pocket like he was going to pull out his wallet, but he didn't. He turned around and put his hand on my throat."
They struggled on the bed, and Ms Howat said her attacker ended up on her stomach choking her with both hands. "I could just feel the life going out of me. I even grabbed him by his [testicles] and squeezed them and he didn't let go."
She was unable to fight back as she was choked into unconsciousness.
"He said nothing. That's the scariest thing about it - the silence. He just looked at me in the eyes like he hated me."
When she later regained consciousness after her boyfriend knocked on her bedroom window, her dress had been removed, her underwear had been pulled to one side and she felt soreness between her legs.
"I was hysterical. I couldn't believe I was alive really. I couldn't believe it had happened. The actual ordeal will be with me until the day that I die."
Ms Howat said she would never forget the face of her attacker.
Questioned by defence lawyer James Rapley, she agreed she had taken drugs including methadone before the incident. She also agreed she was taking prozac for depression, but she said she was not under the influence of any substances when she was raped. Asked if she had been concerned about retaliation after her boyfriend stabbed a man who came to her home days earlier, Ms Howat said she was not.
