The former political figure arrives at court. Photo: RNZ/Calvin Samuel
- A former political figure is on trial, accused of sexually abusing two teenagers in the 1990s
- It's the Crown's case the accused sexually abused both males while he was a mentor at their sports club
- The defence says the complainants are making the allegations up and the incidents never happened
The jury is out in the trial of a former political figure accused of sexually abusing two teenage boys in the 1990s.
The man, who has ongoing name suppression but is not a sitting MP, is on trial in the Auckland District Court, having pleaded not guilty to eight charges of indecent assault.
The charges related to two male complainants who say the man sexually abused them in towns in the Auckland and Waikato regions between 1995 and 1999.
Judge David Sharp finished summing up the case on Friday afternoon and the jury is now deliberating its verdicts on each of the charges.
Crown closes its case
Opening the Crown's case on Monday, prosecutor Rebekah Thompson told the jury the accused "took advantage" of the two teenage boys; supplying them with alcohol and indecently assaulting them when they were "intoxicated, vulnerable and alone".
On Friday morning she said this remained the prosecution's case and asked the jury to consider how "strikingly similar" the stories of both complainants had been.
"[The defendant], a man in his late 20s or early 30s at the time, had an interest in adolescent boys and the accounts of [the first complainant] and [the second complainant] tell us that he was prepared to act on that attraction in very similar ways.
"Supplying them with alcohol, encouraging them with the consumption of alcohol and taking advantage of them when they had succumb to its effects."
Thompson said the defence's suggestion the complainants had misremembered what had happened did not stack up.
"Important, significant, traumatic things like that; you remember them. You remember as a teenage boy an adult man touching your penis. That's not something you just imagine or misinterpret."
She also said the suggestion the first complainant, who went to the police more than two decades after the alleged abuse, had fabricated his allegations because the accused had done well for himself in a political role did not ring true.
"I suggest there's a reason why that particular point wasn't taken much futher and that's because it's incredibly tenuous.
"It's also entirely inconsistent with [this complainant] telling his sister about this in the 1990s, long before [the defendant] had any profile or success.
"It's utterly unbelievable that [this complainant] would make up allegations for that reason."
Defence's closing statements
Closing the defence's case, the accused's lawyer Ian Brookie told the jury it might be easier to find his client guilty, but it did not mean it was right.
"There's perhaps an easier path in this post #metoo world that we live in. The easier path might be to just assume that anytime anyone claims to be a victim of a sexual crime... you just accept it as entirely reliable, entirely truthful and you just interpret everything that they've done and said in accordance with that bland acceptance."
Brookie said it was problematic that many of the Crown's witnesses did not know or could not remember answers to questions asked in this week's trial about events in the 1990s.
He told the jury if it looked closely at the evidence, cross-referencing the 1999 police investigation with what witnesses had told the court this week, "core parts" of the Crowns' case would unravel.
"I really want to encourage you to get out of that mindset of just assuming everything is true and everything is explicable on the basis of truth.
"You've got to be thinking both ways. Maybe it's explicable this way, maybe it's explicable in terms of what [the defendant] says, which is that these things did not happen. You've got to be able to pivot and you've got to be able to look at it both ways."
"A fair trial depends on our ability to ask the hard questions and to look at the evidence with a critical eye and to maybe not take the easy path.
"The Crown's certainly taken the easier path, you might think. And when you do that, when we take a calm, careful, very close focus on the evidence the cracks start to appear."
Where to get help:
Victim Support 0800 842 846
Rape Crisis 0800 88 33 00
HELP Call 24/7 (Auckland): 09 623 1700, (Wellington): 04 801 6655 - push 0 at the menu
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) 022 344 0496