An Uber driver told police he was “shocked” when a woman passenger asked him for sex on a journey to her home from a city bar.
The DVD recording of the police interview with Moses Gengo-Yon Ravanes was played on the second day of the Christchurch District Court trial before Judge Paul Kellar and a jury.
Ravanes is charged with raping a drunk woman passenger during the trip on May 13, 2018, but he says the sex was consensual.
The jury was shown security camera footage of the woman leaving a gathering at a bar on The Strip on Oxford Terrace after a farewell party. A girlfriend told the trial of ordering the Uber for her, because her phone had “died”.
The complainant had wanted to leave the party because she was anxious and nervous about the amount of people who were at the bar. She had stumbled as she walked out the Uber, her friend said.
The friend helped her into the Uber and said goodnight. The complainant phoned the next day to ask for the Uber details because she said she had been sexually assaulted.
Ravanes said in his DVD interview, that when the woman got into the Uber she said she was “not very drunk”. He had stopped on the way to her home because the woman needed to vomit, but she said she was all right.
They had stopped again later in the trip and the woman had given him oral sex, and he said he had been shocked when they were kissing and she asked him for intercourse.
Ravanes is helped in court by an interpreter in Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines.
He did not have an interpreter for his police interview.
At the end of it, in halting English, he spoke directly into the camera, intending to speak directly to the woman in case she ever saw the video.
He said they both knew what happened and that he did not grab or force her and hoped she would forgive him. “I know you are good,” he said.
The trial is continuing.
The post Uber driver ‘shocked’ by sex request appeared first on Courtnews.co.nz.