Girl tells of spin-the-bottle suggestion before alleged rape
A teenage girl declined a game of strip-spin-the-bottle before she says she was raped and violated by two men on the roof of the New Brighton Surf Club building, a Christchurch jury trial was told.
The trial has been told that the 17-year-old went out drinking with a man she met on the social media website, Tagged, on a night in December 2013. The man who picked her up from where she was living had a friend along, and both men are now on trial in the Christchurch District Court.
The men say they believed the sex was consensual.
The girl, now aged 19, has told of being given vodka to drink and sex taking place in the car in the surf club carpark that night, and later being helped or dragged up to the roof where the men took turns having sex with her.
She said she was drunk and not consenting, and needed to stop sometimes because she was feeling sick and felt like vomiting.
The trial was told about the game of strip-spin-the-bottle being suggested. The girl had replied: “Strip up on the roof where everyone can see? I’m not a huge fan of that sort of thing.”
She had mentioned the game again later in the evening, but it was never played.
Defence counsel Andrew Bailey, for one of the men on trial, asked: “With the benefit of hindsight, and with your level of intoxication, would you accept that it may not have been that apparent that you didn’t want these events to take place, and that you weren’t making it particularly clear?”
The complainant replied, “A bit, yeah.”
Cross-examined by Craig Ruane, she agreed she was “not really protesting” when the second man arrived on the roof. She was trying to process what was going on and not really saying anything. The second man joined in the sex, but she did not say anything to him. “I didn’t know what to do,” she told the court.
The complainant said she had arrived home “drunk, scared, and sore” after the men had dropped her off nearby. She had bruises on her arms from being pulled up the stairs to the surf club roof, bruises on her lip, and grazes on her knees.
She had met the men after making contact with one of them on the Tagged website. She agreed she knew it was used by some people as a dating site and a site where people could meet to have one-night stands.
She said she had broken up with her boyfriend a few days before the incident. Her tagline on her profile on the site read: “Screw relationships. They are just a wait of time.”
Parampreet Singh, 26, is charged with five offences of sexual violation including rape, and Amritpal Singh, 23, is charged with three. They deny all charges. The men are friends, but are not related. A Punjabi interpreter is assisting with the trial.
Today is the second day of the trial before Judge Jane Farish and a jury.
Category: Focus
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