A core piece of evidence in the rape trial was a Facebook message sent by the complainant to the defendant, William Stainton. Photo / 123rf
WARNING: This article discusses allegations of sexual assault and may be upsetting to some readers.
It was one teenager’s word against another in a trial centred on whether the sex they had after watching movies together was consensual, or was rape.
But today, on the fourth day, the jury deciding took less than an hour to find William Stainton, 24, not guilty of the two charges he was defending.
Stainton has been on trial in the Whangārei District Court before Judge John McDonald following the complainant’s allegations he raped her twice years ago.
In her evidence, she said the two, who were in their late teens at the time, had known each other through a group of friends.
She alleged that one night she invited Stainton to watch a movie but as it finished and she put away her laptop, he got on top of her and began having sex with her.
The complainant said she told him to stop, which he did.
She testified that they then had a conversation about what had happened and she explained to him that she was not ready to have sex and the pair agreed to be friends.
But Stainton, who gave evidence in his defence, claimed no such conversation happened.
Following that night, the girl alleged she overheard Stainton and his friends discussing him having sex with her, and his friends praising him, which she said “triggered” her.
The girl then invited Stainton over a second time to watch a movie and on this occasion, she alleged he held her down and raped her.
Stainton maintained the sex was consensual and it was the complainant who set the pace of the night.
However, she sent a message via Facebook to him in the following days saying: “I thought we had discussed that I wasn’t ready and I got a fright when things moved so soon.”
Stainton, who had already blocked her on other social media accounts, did not respond and when the Crown asked why he would not question what she was talking about, he said he was confused.
“I’m confused ‘cause we’d never had the conversation about her not being ready for any sexual activity,” Stainton said in evidence.
“What did you want that night?” Crown lawyer Geraldine Kelly asked him.
“To watch a movie, to hang out with a friend who I thought was rather attractive,” he responded.
Stainton said the girl began breathing heavily after the sexual encounter and he rubbed her back before she lay on his chest.
She, however, gave evidence that Stainton rolled over and went to sleep while she lay crying.
Stainton said there were “zero tears”.
Defence lawyer Matthew Ridgley claimed the complainant’s narrative did not add up and that her evidence was inconsistent.
He said her recollection of the dates was wrong by about six months, she claimed to have cut contact with Stainton yet sent him a Facebook message and she did not want to give her phone to police to be searched.
“She’s accused someone of raping her twice, but won’t give her phone to police?
“Her accounts don’t line up with the timeline. There are either two possibilities, either someone is mistaken or they’re being untruthful.”
He also questioned why she had invited Stainton to her house a second time if she was so fearful of him.
“She said she was ‘quite triggered when he came into my house’,” he recalled of her evidence.
“How does that add up if you were more than happy to invite him back?”
Crown lawyer Geraldine Kelly put to the jury that “someone was lying”.
“It’s as simple as that,” she said.
“Because logically both [name redacted] and William Stainton have different versions and both cannot be true.”
Following the closings by the Crown and defence, the jury began its deliberation. Shortly after, the group returned with unanimous not guilty verdicts on both charges.
Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.
The 61-year-old wrongly believed he was in a relationship with the woman.