The accused rapist, who has interim name suppression, was based in Whakatāne at the time of the incident but is from overseas.
Warning: This story deals with allegations of sexual assault and may be distressing.
A man accused of rape says he was leaving the bathroom after sobering himself up from a night of St Patrick’s Day festivities involving drinking and cannabis when he heard a female voice calling out.
The woman he thought had been “flirting” and “forward” with him earlier at the pub was calling from the bedroom she shared with her fiance, in a flat that was hosting an “afterparty”, he said in the Tauranga District Court this week.
The man, who has chosen to give evidence, said he went in and knelt beside her bed.
He told her, “I enjoyed getting to know you tonight”, and claimed she responded in kind.
They began kissing, he said, shared “dirty talk”, and she allegedly played with his hair and removed her underwear.
He performed oral sex on her and he claims she told him she wanted him to “f*** [her] on the beach”, so he proceeded to have sex with her.
Then the door opened, the lights came on, and the woman’s fiance asked him, “What the f*** is going on?”
He says the woman then “wouldn’t respond” and just “groaned” when her fiance “nudged” her and said her name.
The fiance accused him of having “f***ing raped” the woman.
The man replied, “No, it‘s not what it looks like”, and appealed to the woman to “tell him... tell him”.
But she remained silent, he said in evidence.
A flatmate of the couple came in and punched the man in the face, and he says he doesn’t remember much of the next 24 hours.
The man, who has interim name suppression, was based in Whakatāne at the time but is from overseas. He is defending a charge of rape in a trial that began on Monday.
In his evidence, he spoke about events leading up to the alleged incident, which the Crown has described as “a polished recitation of a story”.
The man recalled a night out celebrating St Patrick’s Day with good conversation, joking around and dancing.
He said it marked the end of what had been a stint of working in Whakatāne and spoke about his positive experiences of exploring New Zealand.
In questioning by his lawyer Phil Mitchell, he gave a full account of everything he’d drunk that night, his interactions and observations, and how he came to be found with his pants around his ankles in the woman’s bedroom.
Crown prosecutor Richard Jenson said the man’s account was “perfect and polished”.
He had “tailored” it to fit the evidence and explain his actions that night, Jenson suggested.
“It‘s not an account of a young man who’s been out at the pub and has had a few drinks, and pieced together the details.”
The man gave evidence about his interactions with the woman that night, and how she’d continued to be flirtatious despite his drawing her attention to the engagement ring on her finger.
He demonstrated what he claimed she’d done – pulling the ring to the tip of her finger, then pushing it back on as she winked at him.
But the woman, who has also given evidence at trial, had no recollection of that, nor much of the evening after about 9pm.
She described herself as an “attentive conversationalist”, who liked to hold people’s gaze, and hands, when she spoke to them.
The man said in his evidence she had been “forward” and he had enjoyed her attention.
“It‘s great to have someone flirting with you,” he said.
“I was single at the time.”
However, he said he’d struggled to “read the dynamic” given she was engaged.
The woman’s fiance had invited him, and others, back to their flat.
His friends declined the invitation but urged him to go and “have fun”, given he had finished his work in New Zealand and was now on holiday.
Three of the defendant‘s friends, who were there that night, were called by the defence to give evidence at the trial.
They described flirtatious behaviour between the pair – some specified the woman touching the man on his shoulder, chest and arms, and holding hands.
Evidence has also focused on the woman’s intoxication levels that night and her vomiting before the alleged incident took place.
At the flat, the woman had indicated to her fiance that she needed to vomit. The defendant offered to help.
The fiance said she was lying down next to her bed and needed assistance to lift her head to vomit into a bowl the man held.
He said it was the most drunk he’d ever seen her, and even with his attempts to keep her hair back, it still ended up with vomit in it.
However, the man said she induced herself to vomit; he said it wasn’t because she was drunk, it was because she was feeling bloated and afterwards she’d been laughing about it.
The man said the woman’s behaviour and level of intoxication at the flat were the same as they had been earlier in the night.
However, the Crown pointed to text messages the man sent to a friend after the woman vomited.
It said how things were “different than he thought”, and that she had vomited.
The Crown suggested he must have known any “aspirations” he’d had for consensual sex were “out the window”.
The man disagreed.
He said the fiance later went to check on the woman, after she’d left to have a shower, and had come out and said the woman was “fine”.
The fiance testified that when he went to find her, she was asleep in bed.
The defence case is that she later called out to the defendant, and invited him in, after he’d visited the bathroom.
However, the Crown says the man had sex with her while she was asleep.
“If there was anything remotely consensual and mutual, you would have done the responsible thing and got a condom out that you had in your pocket,” Jenson said.
“No,” the man said.
“[It‘s] another point that shows us that all this was you quickly and stealthily going into her room, doing what you wanted to do, and leaving as quickly as you could,” Jenson said
The man denied this.
The trial 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.