Hamilton dentist Rahul Gautam, left, leaves the Hamilton District Court on Monday. Photo / Belinda Feek
A “foolish” Hamilton dentist has been cleared of three charges of indecent assault after plying a complainant with wine and allegedly groping, kissing and touching her.
In his evidence to the jury yesterday, Rahul Gautamclaimed there was an atmosphere of “girlfriend, boyfriend” after leading the woman up to the bedroom of his Tamahere mansion on the evening of March 27, 2024.
The 51-year-old owner of the Hamilton Emergency Dental Centre, was labelled by his lawyer, Philip Morgan, KC, as a “foolish man thinking that he might have a romantic interlude with the complainant”.
Morgan said Gautam accepted that he touched the woman’s breast and tried to kiss her, but denies touching her genitals, and defended the charges on the basis that he didn’t realise the complainant was not willing.
Both Morgan and Crown prosecutor Amy Alcock delivered their closing submissions yesterday afternoon, while Judge Tini Clark gave her summing up this morning.
The two accounts of what happened were “very different”, as was their respective recall of how the alleged incident came about.
The jury was told to focus on what was going through Gautam’s mind at the time of the alleged offending, and whether he had the consent of the victim.
She sent the jury of six men and six women out to start their deliberations at 10.05am.
The jury returned with their unanimous not guilty verdicts at 2.20pm.
A relieved Gautam was hugged by supporters after he was released from the dock and into the public gallery.
Alcock said Gautam had taken the woman to his Tamahere home after she took up his offer of driving lessons.
However, when they arrived, Gautam drove his car straight into the garage, closed the door, and, before leading her to his bedroom, grabbed a half-empty bottle of wine, two glasses.
Alcock said the woman took that offer of a driving lesson for what it was.
“But really, the Crown says, a driving lesson was never part of the defendant’s plan that day.
“It was to take her to his house, a big house, where he was going to be home alone ... not for a driving lesson or play snakes and ladders.
“It was to have a sexual encounter with her.”
The woman said Gautam held and rubbed her hand for most of the journey to his Woodcock Rd mansion, and, arriving there, she claimed he told her that she wouldn’t be getting a driving lesson.
Instead, they went to his bedroom, and Gautam closed the curtains, turned off the lights, and turned the television on, playing music videos with “scantily clad women”.
He then lay on the bed, with his legs up and back against the pillows, and repeatedly asked the complainant to do the same.
The woman suggested they go out on to his balcony, where she alleged Gautam spoke of having ducks and chickens, some of which were released into the wild, and some were shot, telling her that he had a gun in the house.
She testified that they then went back into the room, and Gautam repeatedly asked her to sit on the bed, with her legs up, before asking her to take her top off, which she reluctantly did.
The woman alleged Gautam persistently tried to get her on to his bed, and, after she did, his persistent behaviour continued with him trying to touch her breasts, and, at one point, touching her genitals.
She also alleges he moved her face to kiss him on the lips as they left his house to drop her home.
Morgan asked the jury whether they really thought that Gautam deliberately intended to procure for himself the advantage of some interest that he had in the woman to molest her in that way.
“Or, do you think he was just a silly fool, who had a view of what was happening here, that he thought mistakenly or otherwise, but genuinely, that what he was doing was in pursuit of some romantic idea that he thought the complainant shared.
“My submission to you is that it’s a long bow to draw to say that this man was just callously exploiting this [woman] for his own sexual gratification as opposed to him thinking he would have a romantic tryst with this woman.”
Morgan asked the jury if it was possible that a 51-year-old man, with a 30-year career in dentistry, would decide to use the woman for his own “sexual gratification”.
“Really?” he asked.
“If you accept this is a reasonable possibility ... but a misguided view of the existence of a relationship that he wanted to pursue, then I suggest to you that it would be reflected in your verdicts.”
He said the case was about “two socially inept people” who “behaved very oddly”.
“Can you imagine being a woman in a man’s car ... and [he] takes your hand ... strokes the palm of your hand while driving ... all the way to Woodcock Rd without taking your hand away, without saying ‘Ew, what are you doing’, or ‘Actually, I have changed my mind, I think I will go home’.
“Then ... I suggest the oddity of these two ending up in a bedroom at all.
“Then again, the oddity of them both sitting there on the bed, feet up, backs against the wall, sipping their wine ... without [the woman] using her phone.”
Morgan asked the jury how his client was supposed to know the woman felt a sense of entrapment without her saying or doing anything to let him know.
“As I say, members of the jury, this is a case where ... you have two socially inept people, and unfortunately they have ended up in the same room.”
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.