Alleged rape victim 'lured into van by nice partner'

Maureen Iti and Jason Jones at Hamilton High Court. Photo / Sarah Ivey

A woman who alleges she awoke to find a man sexually violating her in a van says she only got into the vehicle because she trusted his partner whom she thought was "being nice" to her.

Jason Lloyd Jones, 38, and his partner Maureen Samantha Iti, 33, are on trial jointly charged with raping three young women in Hamilton.

The pair are defending the charges and say the incidents were consensual threesomes.

The Hamilton mother said her recollection of events was "patchy" but she told the High Court at Hamilton how she had gone out with friends on a Saturday night in mid-2009, but lost them in Charmers Bar and Night Club.

She met Iti there. It is alleged they took a taxi to Firecats strip club where they drank until the bar closed and Iti led the woman to a van where Jones was waiting "because she was being nice".

"I was drunk and with a female I thought I could trust," the woman said.

She said she slipped in and out of consciousness in the back of the vehicle before waking up in pain to find Jones sexually violating her.

She awoke in the morning covered with a blanket, still in the van.

Iti's lawyer, Gavin Boot, has argued the sex was consensual.

The couple face a further charge of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and an alternative charge of indecent assault.

Jones is also accused of performing an indecent act in public in front of a fourth complainant, a 20-year-old woman, but denies this too.

The woman's cross-examination continues today and the trial before Justice Duffy is expected to run until early next week.