Rape accused in tears at guilty verdicts
Joshua Allan Schooner was in tears as a Christchurch District Court jury found him guilty of raping and sexually violating a woman after considering its verdicts for just two hours.
“I want to appeal,” Schooner called out in court. “I didn’t rape nobody.”
Schooner, 26, had claimed the sexual activity was “perfectly consensual” but the Crown called evidence from the complainant aged in her 30s and another woman aged 44 who both told of Schooner anally raping them in 2011.
Both women gave evidence of Schooner having a “split personality” and becoming suddenly and unexpectedly aggressive during sexual encounters.
Family and supporters were also in tears, and a woman mouthed, “I love you,” as Schooner was brought back into court afterwards for a sentencing date to be set. He will stay in custody until then.
Judge Raoul Neave thanked the jury for its work through the four-day trial. “I don’t imagine you found it an easy case to deal with,” he said. “This one had its particular difficulties.”
The jury was told that the complainant had been raped, anally raped, and forced to perform oral sex by Schooner when he dragged her up to his room at his flat in Phillipstown. She had gone to the flat because he offered to give her a fork to get her car started after police had taken her keys when they found she was on a restricted licence and was about to drive after her curfew.
She complained of being left stranded in the carpark of The Embankment Tavern when the pub closed at 4am on June 23, 2011, before Schooner had offered to help.
The other woman had a sexual encounter with Schooner about six weeks after that, after inviting him home and cooking him dinner.
The Crown called her to show the similarities between the two sexual attacks which inflicted damage on the women when he anally raped them and would not stop in spite of their protests. The second woman later withdrew her complaint to the police, saying she had been put under pressure to do that. She admitted having a conviction for making a false rape complaint when she was a teenager.
Schooner walked away free from his first rape trial as a 21-year-old in February 2008 when the judge stopped the trial on the first day. The 39-year-old complainant had made a second statement to the police two days after July 2006 incident, saying that she had consented to the late night sex with a youth she did not know.
The woman had admitted being “rotten drunk” at the time of the street encounter which led to sex on the steps of a dentist’s surgery. Schooner claimed she had “pashed” him and wanted the sex. She said in evidence at the trial that she could not recall making the second statement that she had agreed to the sex.
The Crown then decided not to go any further with the trial and the judge discharged Schooner.
Today, however, he faces a likely long jail term after four guilty verdicts. Judge Raoul Neave remanded him in custody for sentencing on October 30, and ordered a pre-sentence report.
He also gave Schooner a first-strike warning under the system that imposes heavier penalties on repeat violent offenders.
Before the closing addresses began on the last day of the trial, Judge Neave told the jury that the kidnapping charge Schooner faced would be dropped. The Crown alleged Schooner had dragged the woman upstairs by her jacket to his bedroom where the sex attack took place.
He explained: “The (kidnap) charge involves an allegation of detaining the complainant for the purpose of what then follows by way of sexual activity. That allegation really adds nothing to the other four aspects of the indictment.”
The Crown relied on the lack of consent by the woman being part of the other four charges, and the kidnap charge was “an unnecessary complication”, he said.
Removing the charge meant that the jury “can focus on the true issues in the case”, the judge said.
Category: News
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