A teenage girl says a boy she'd become friends with sexually violated her. The now-young man is on trial in the Tauranga District Court this week, where he denies any wrongdoing. Photo / George Novak
A teenage girl’s self-harming led to disclosures of an alleged sexual assault by a teen boy she’d become friends with.
The teen, who is now a young man, is on trial in the Tauranga District Court, charged with sexual violation and an alternative charge of sexual conduct with a young person.
The then-15-year-old girl and the 16-year-old boy, who has name suppression, were in the same friend group and had been hanging out regularly.
The Crown said on the evening of the alleged assault the group were gathered at the boy’s house, where they were instructed by his dad to keep the door open as they retreated to a bedroom.
The five sat on a single mattress, leaning up against the wall, listening to music and chatting.
The court heard one boy fell asleep early in the evening and the girl said at some point her best friend and the best friend’s boyfriend left the room. It was at that point the teen began to kiss her.
Under cross-examination, she attempted to explain how she responded in terms of whether she kissed him back, saying “I did, but I didn’t”.
Under re-examination, she explained she had kissed back briefly at first but then stopped.
When asked about what happened next, she said she was clear: he had unbuttoned her jeans and used his hand to violate her. She said he also took her hand and used it on himself.
The girl said she said no, but under cross-examination clarified this was in the form of a “whisper”.
She also said she mumbled, “I don’t want this”. She claims the teen told her “it’s okay” and continued the violation.
She said she became “frozen” and told the court she “didn’t know what to do” and had her legs “glued shut”, but he continued.
The court heard she was 15 at the time and had never done “anything like that before”.
She said she may have been expecting a kiss but nothing more and was aware the teen was older than her.
She said the alleged violation happened when the lights were off, and in the 15 or so minutes before she got a text from her mum to say she’d arrived to pick her and her friend up.
The court heard she’d felt the phone vibrate under her leg as the alleged violation was happening and pulled her hand away to retrieve it.
She saw the message, stood up, buttoned up her jeans and told her friend they needed to leave.
She couldn’t be sure if her friend had been in the room the whole time, as “it was dark”. She said it was all a “blur” when the alleged sexual contact was happening, and she was focused on what was happening, not on the rest of the room.
However, she recalled her friend had been in the room when she said it was time to go and the friend saw her buttoning up her jeans.
However, the friend told the teen’s lawyer, in her evidence, that she couldn’t remember seeing the girl buttoning up her pants.
She said she never left the girl’s side in the evening and never saw anything other than kissing between the girl and the teen.
However, she did say there were times during the night when she was kissing her own boyfriend, not looking at the other two.
The teen claims nothing other than kissing happened and denies they were ever left alone in the room.
The friend confirmed that some weeks later the girl told her about the alleged violation, but she didn’t see it happen at the time.
The teen’s lawyer, Rachael Adams, said in her opening statement all that happened was a teenage hook-up – some making out and cuddling.
“What we used to call pashing,” she said.
When the teen had become the subject of “ugly allegations and gossip”, the girl had “buyer’s remorse”, was “embarrassed” and had shifted from wishing she hadn’t done it to saying she didn’t choose to do it.
The girl made a formal complaint more than a year after the alleged events of the night.
In the Crown opening, prosecutor Laura Clay said the girl’s mother would give evidence to say she’d observed changes in the girl’s behaviour in the months after the alleged sexual assault – a “range of red flags” that indicated she wasn’t okay.
The girl’s mother told the court about the day her daughter confided in her and her husband about the alleged violation.
The girl had pointed to a news article about the teen, before revealing what had happened to her, and when and where it happened.
The mother said she remembered the night in question, as she had picked her daughter up from the address just before midnight.
She recalled in the month after the alleged assault she noticed a change in her daughter’s behaviour – she had become “withdrawn” and had started wearing a large hoodie.
As time went on, she began to notice the girl had cuts on her legs. When she asked her daughter about it, her daughter was dismissive and didn’t want to talk.
But then she saw cuts on her arms too and made arrangements for her daughter to see a GP.
She was referred to counselling, which continued through the rest of that year.
When the girl was asked about the self-harm during cross-examination, she broke down in tears.
She said she’d had a difficult time with the stresses of school and exams, friendship difficulties and the events with the teen boy affecting her mental health.
Adams said she has rewritten history and, after hearing “bad things” about the teen, she was “embarrassed”.
Adams put to her that she “recreated events” to use this as “a way of blaming what was going on in your life on someone else” and eliciting sympathy from others.
The girl denied that, stating she doesn’t like sympathy.
The trial before Judge Paul Geoghegan continues.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.