Innocent childish fun or sexual abuse: jury to decide

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A man’s nieces claim he sexually offended against them for years but the accused says they simply outgrew the rough and tumble, childish fun he’d always had with them and he didn’t realise they’d begun perceiving it differently.

On trial this week by jury in Gisborne District Court, the man admitted some of that fun involved him slapping the girls’ backsides but said it was only as part of playfights. He outright denied their claims he kissed them with his tongue and touched them inappropriately, including by using his fingers to penetrate the vagina of one of the girls.

“Those things simply didn’t happen,” counsel Manaaki Terekia said on the man’s behalf.

Opening the Crown’s case, prosecutor Lara Marshall alleged the girls’ live-in uncle began offending against them when they were six and seven years old and that it didn’t stop until one of them was aged 14 and told a school counsellor who informed police.

The 53-year-old man can’t be named without risk of identifying the complainants, whose identities are automatically protected by law. His trial has been set down for four days.

The man has pleaded not guilty to 16 representative charges alleging continuous offending by him between 2013 and 2021.

Eight of the charges are for doing indecent acts to one of his nieces when she was a child under 12 or a young person under 16. She claimed the man kissed her with his tongue in her mouth, grabbed her breast, slapped her backside, and touched her vagina.

He faces three charges of doing indecent acts to his other niece while she was a child aged under 12 — once by kissing her and twice by touching her breasts in a bedroom and a living room. He is also charged in relation to that younger girl with unlawful sexual connection by unlawful sexual violation — alleging he regularly put his fingers in the girl’s vagina.

The older of the girls, now 16, told police the accused would wait until their father was not around before offending against them.

She described the offending in detail to a specialist police interviewer — as did her younger sister. The older girl claimed to have witnessed the man’s offending against her younger sister.

Those recorded interviews make up part of the Crown case. Evidence will also be heard from the girls’ father and another of their uncles who lived in the house, the school counsellor and the detective in charge of the case.

The jury will also be given counter-intuitive evidence designed to educate participants in the justice system about abuse suffered by children and young people.

Ms Marshall said the case was simple without any complicated facts or legal matters. The jury’s verdict would rest on how truthful and credible they found the two complainants.

In an opening statement outlining defence issues, Mr Terekia said the accused had only ever interacted with the girls as a loving uncle, engaging in innocent fun — rough and tumble games; things like tickling and playfighting —the sort of things of which most people have fond childhood memories. He just didn’t realise when it was time to put away the childish games. Sometimes that time could be difficult for adults to discern.

The accused had been honest and open in his interview with police and wouldn’t have been so had his actions been sinister. He wouldn’t have made admissions in that interview about slapping the girl’s backsides during playfights, if he thought that behaviour had been inappropriate or wrong.

Mr Terekia said most people were conditioned to accept these types of allegations at face value but the jury needed to put aside that bias and make its decision based on evidence — not speculation.

Judge Turitea Bolstad is presiding.