The accused, whose name is suppressed, is on trial in the Nelson District Court on charges of rape and kidnapping, following the pair’s relationship in 2021.
Prosecutor Ian Murray alleged the woman did not consent to either encounter that led to charges of rape, and that she had at one point been detained against her will, leading to the charge of kidnapping.
The defence focused on the man’s view that the woman consented to sexual activity and that he neither detained her nor intended for her to be confined.
On day two of the trial, the court drilled into more than 5000 messages the pair exchanged between July and December 2021.
A woman who accused her former partner of rape has been challenged in the Nelson District Court on the nature of their relationship. Photo / Tracy Neal
The woman came to New Zealand from China and was in temporary, casual employment when she met the man in April 2021. Soon after she began a relationship with him she felt “pushed into”.
The court heard she met the defendant when they lived in shared accommodation for their work on an orchard in the North Island.
The woman confirmed she began a sexual relationship with the man, describing it as “a little bizarre” because she was “never interested in having sex with him from the beginning”.
She agreed under cross-examination that apart from the two occasions when the alleged rapes occurred on she had been “kind of” having consensual sex with him.
“I didn’t want to do it. He wanted sex so I felt I needed to please him.”
In June 2021 the pair moved to the Nelson region, and she alleged the first rape occurred on July 1.
She said she was asleep when the defendant began having sex with her. She woke up and made it clear she did not want to have sex with him.
Despite this, the pair continued in a relationship before the defendant moved back to the North Island. The complainant got another job and met someone else.
The pair became close, though the woman remained in contact with the defendant.
In November 2021 the man was in Tauranga and invited the woman to visit, from where he planned a road trip back down to the South Island.
When asked why she agreed to visit him, after a lot of messaging that suggested the relationship was over, the woman said she didn’t want to be harsh.
“I didn’t want to hurt him. I still wanted to be friends. I didn’t want to get into wars with him and he still had some of my luggage.”
She later told defence lawyer Lee Lee Heah under cross-examination that the man had said she could “p**s off from my life” if she didn’t visit, which “felt like a death threat”.
She said she had only wanted to stay briefly but the man convinced her to stay longer and join him on the road trip.
The Crown said the man booked a cabin for the ferry crossing of Cook Strait, and while the complainant slept he accessed her phone, went through her messages and as a result, became “angry and jealous”.
The pair then headed to Kaikōura, and arranged accommodation in separate beds, as a result of what the man had seen on the woman’s phone.
During the course of the evening, the pair argued. The woman said she was tired and wanted to go to sleep which was when the Crown alleged the second rape occurred.
Afterwards, she asked to be taken to the Tasman region where she was living at the time .
The man allegedly began driving towards Christchurch, but the woman made it clear that was not where she wanted to go and called the police.
In the emergency call, played to the court, she was heard to say she did not want to go with him, that she was in his car and wanted to go back before she was heard to scream.
She said she was afraid at that moment of his “dangerous driving.
“I thought he was going to drive the car into the sea and I was scared.”
Asked why she hadn’t reported the alleged rape until the following year, the woman claimed she hadn’t intended to report it but had gone to the police for help with a protection order, and the charges had arisen from there.
The man has since pleaded guilty to a charge of breaching the order and attempting to pervert the course of justice by contacting the woman and asking her to withdraw her complaint.
The defence asked the jury to not be distracted by his subsequent behaviour.
The trial continues.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
