Claims of rape false, court told

A woman has gone on trial accused of making false allegations of rape against police in what prosecutors say was a bid to derail charges she was facing at the time.

The 44-year-old appeared in the Hamilton District Court yesterday facing two charges of making false allegations against police.

She pleaded not guilty and maintains the rapes and violation she alleged did occur.

The woman, whose name and details are suppressed, was charged in December 2003 with theft, using a document and burglary after police found other people's bank cards at her home.

Two months after the arrest, she made allegations of rape and sexual violation against the officer who charged her and a female non-sworn member of the police who searched her.

Crown prosecutor Simon Moore told the court the woman had made up the allegations to derail the charges police had laid against her.

Judge Robert Spear heard that police searched the woman's home on December 9, 2003, and took her to the police station for questioning.

The constable dealing with her, who has since left the force, asked the station's watchhouse officer, a non-sworn member of the police, to search her because there were no sworn female officers available.

The man, whose name and details are suppressed, told the court the woman had asked to go to the toilet but he had said she needed to be searched first.

By the time the watchhouse officer was free to carry out the search the woman had wet herself.

The watchhouse officer, whose details are also suppressed, said she arrived to do the search and found the woman standing in a disabled persons' toilet.

"The defendant wetting herself had obviously just occurred and he [the constable] had taken a backward stance, shocked by it," the watch-house officer said.

She said she took the sobbing woman into the toilet and shut the door, where the defendant took off her socks, shoes and jeans before asking to go to the toilet.

The woman sat on the toilet, putting her fist into her groin before moving her hand up under her shirt, the woman said.

She was suspicious so asked the woman to take her top off.

She then found a white handkerchief in her hand containing bank cards which did not belong to her.

She put the woman's wet clothes into a bag and gave her police overalls to put on.

The constable then took her home.

On December 11, 2003, the woman faced charges in court. Her lawyer then, Tim Clark, gave evidence yesterday that she told him there that she had been pressured to make a statement, had been searched by a non-sworn member of the police, had been made to stand naked and had wet herself. But she made no allegations of rape or sexual violation.

Then in February the woman contacted him and made the allegations of rape and sexual violation.

Mr Clark said that in an interview at his office, she said the watchhouse officer had violated her during the search and the constable had been to her house four times since she was charged, threatening her and sexually violating and raping her.

The former officer yesterday told the woman's present lawyer, Mike Robb, that he left the police last year because he was concerned that the force was changing the way he viewed people. He said he was having psychological counselling.

He knew nothing of the woman's allegations against him until May last year.

He said he was either at home or at work on the days the woman alleges she was raped.