A 16-year-old says she went with a man into public changing rooms in Mount Maunganui because she was afraid Raveen Saily would "harm her" with his knife if she didn't.
This article deals with allegations of rape and sexual violation and may be distressing for some readers.
When a 16-year-old agreed to go to Mount Maunganui’s Bayfair with a man she had been messaging on Snapchat, she says there were no set plans for sexual contact.
But as she walked across the nearby rugby field, and saw Raveen Saily had a knife, she began to sense something might be wrong, a court has been told.
By the time they reached the Arataki Community Centre changing rooms, and the 20-year-old told her they should go inside, she said “My heart felt like it was jumping out of my chest”.
She alleges he had earlier grabbed her forcefully as they walked, and once they were at the changing rooms he told her that if she didn’t come inside, he would hurt her with the knife.
Once inside, she says he forced her, by pushing on her shoulders, down onto her knees where he made her perform a sex act, stopping when she vomited.
She alleges he then “told her” to have sexual intercourse, by sitting on his lap, before he further violated her.
Saily is on trial in the Tauranga District Court this week, facing charges of indecent assault, rape, and sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.
The pair had been introduced by a friend of the 16-year-old, whom the court heard had met Saily online and wanted to meet him in a public place.
The two girls met Saily at Bayfair, where they both alleged he introduced himself as “John”.
After that meeting, the 16-year-old complainant said Saily had added her on Snapchat and their conversations began.
They agreed to meet again at Bayfair on Labour Day 2021, and the 16-year-old arrived there by bus about midday.
Saily’s lawyer Bill Nabney put to the teen that the sexual acts had been pre-planned, through their Snapchat messaging in the lead-up to their meeting.
He suggested the teen had told the man she would perform a sex act when the pair had been having “sexual talk” over Snapchat, with the teen sending photos of herself, partially clothed.
The girl said under cross-examination she had felt pressured to agree, but had done so reluctantly, and there had been nothing to indicate that would happen on the Monday when she met him at Bayfair.
The pair had discussed other sexual acts, but the girl said she had not agreed to any of those things because she’d had no experience of them.
But Nabney put to her that she hadn’t been surprised when Saily had been carrying a knife that day, because they’d already discussed “kinky knife stuff.”
The teen said while they had talked about it, she hadn’t said it was something she was comfortable with.
“We had the conversation but we didn’t clarify that [the knife] was going to be present on Monday,” she said.
She disagreed with Nabney’s suggestion that she’d never been dragged by the arm as she’d described, pointing to CCTV footage that did not show any grabbing or pulling, but simply the two walking together, with her following behind.
She said the grabbing and pulling had happened when they were out of view of the CCTV cameras.
The CCTV footage prompted further questions from Nabney, as the girl was viewed standing outside the changing rooms, for just under a minute, before she followed him into the public bathrooms where she alleges he raped her.
Nabney said she hadn’t been forced to follow him in, but the teen said she had been too frightened not to, as he had threatened her with a knife.
“Based on my fitness, I knew there was no way of me getting away,” she said.
“When there’s a knife involved, you don’t risk it.”
Nabney put to her that everything that happened had been consensual.
He said it was only later, after she and Saily had walked back to Bayfair together and then to the bus stop, and she was on the bus home, that she’d become afraid her parents would find out.
He said she’d “had a change of heart”.
She had made allegations of rape and sexual violation to “get in first” before her parents found out she had “been with a man”.
The girl said this wasn’t true.
“I wouldn’t lie about this,” she said.
One of the features of the trial is the role of Snapchat, both in the interactions between Saily and the 16-year-old, and between her and her sister, and another friend.
All the teen’s social media interactions with Saily allegedly happened on the photo-sharing app, where she said she had sent an image of herself partially clothed.
She said this was in response to his asking for them, but Nabney put to her that she had sent them unsolicited.
She disagreed.
She said after the alleged incident, Saily had “blocked” her on the app, and she could no longer find his profile, having known him only as “John”, or by his Snapchat profile name, “Jumping Potatoes”.
The 16-year-old also used Snapchat to message her younger sister, confiding in her, after some hesitancy, about what she alleges happened.
After telling her sister, “he just... raped me”, she later said, “I didn’t know he was 20... Yes... He’s on Snap.”
The teen also told her sister that the man was a friend of a friend from high school.
The sister asked if the friend knew his name, to which she replied, “No”.
The sister replied over Snapchat, “HOW DOES SHE NOT KNOW HIS NAME”.
The teen explained that her friend had also met the man over Snapchat, before writing on the chat, “Mom and [Dad] are going to take my phone away”.
The trial continues.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.
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