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Historic charges against a man accused of raping his teenage daughter have been dropped by the High Court, after police lost the woman's original complaint.
The judgment, obtained by the Press, revealed the man allegedly admitted having unlawful sex with his daughter.
Dunedin police lost the woman's complaint from 20 years ago, the judgment said.
The woman, 44, said she was molested by her father over five years in the 1970s.
When she complained of rape to police in 1985, she said she was advised by a detective it was "just incest -- merely an inappropriate sexual contact between relatives".
No charges were laid, court documents showed.
The woman renewed her complaint to police in 2004.
But Justice Fogarty, in the High Court in Dunedin in March, said a fair trial was impossible because of the police's inability to produce the original statement, or find the officer who took it.
"I am satisfied that this is one of those exceptional cases where the court must exercise its inherent power to stay the prosecution," the judge ruled.
- NZPA
