A foreign woman spent almost a year travelling New Zealand with a man who is now accused of repeatedly assaulting, tying up, and raping her.
The two had an itinerant lifestyle, often living as freedom campers when they were not working on farms and orchards.
After the two met at Muriwai Beach near Auckland, the man said, “I want to show you New Zealand.”
The woman, who had only been in New Zealand briefly when they met, told the Christchurch District Court today that she found him “charming”, and agreed to travel with him.
But now the Crown is alleging that the man raped her five times, tied her up, sexually violated her with a knife, saw handle, and vibrator, and assaulted her nine times. The 45-year-old denies 19 charges in the trial before Judge Gary MacAskill and a jury which is expected to take at least two weeks.
The woman was the first of 21 witnesses called by the Crown, and gave evidence to the trial from behind a screen.
The man does not have name suppression, but his identification would identify the victim who has automatic suppression as the complainant in a sex case. They had travelled together to many parts of New Zealand over 11 months.
Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes said the issue of consent would be the central issue at the trial. He told of the woman’s allegations that she had been tied up, threatened with a knife, sexually violated and raped, strangled and suffocated.
However, she had returned to the relationship with the man after he apologised and continued her travels with him. She had once made a complaint to the police in Queenstown but withdrew the allegations when she made a fuller statement.
Mr Hawes told the jury that they might think it odd that she stayed, but he said: “She was having real mental and psychological conflicts in terms of this relationship.”
The woman told the court that after an initial aggressive incident with the man, they had split but resumed the relationship when he apologised after a week because “I was loving him”. He then tied her up, threatened her again, and forced her to have sex.
Eleven months after beginning the relationship, after another incident in Canterbury, she left him at Barrington Mall and called the police for help.
Defence counsel Ethan Huda told the jury that the trial would unfold gradually and they should not come to any conclusions until they had heard all the evidence, and reminded them that the Crown had to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
The trial is continuing.
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