Another man is on trial in Christchurch in relation to women being drugged and sexually assaulted at a popular city bar. Photo / Pool
WARNING: this story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
Another man is standing trial this week in relation to the drugging and sexual assault of women at a central Christchurch bar.
The man - who cannot be identified due to an interim suppression order - is defending a charge of sexually violating a woman at the bar in August 2018.
His case follows the almost three-month trial of three associates on a litany of charges of stupefying, raping and assaulting more than 20 women.
The offending was all linked to the same popular bar and a nearby restaurant.
In the first trial, two Judge Paul Mabey found two of the men guilty on almost 70 charges.
The third man denied multiple charges of sexual assault and stupefying and was acquitted on every count except one of offering to supply an illicit drug.
The second trial originally involved the three men from the earlier trial and the fourth man.
The fourth man had successfully argued to have the allegations against him - relating to just one female complainant - heard separately.
Last week most of the charges against the other offenders were dropped - but one of the men convicted of rape admitted a charge of indecent assault.
Judge Mabey is also presiding over the second trial which is expected to run for several days.
The trial opened today with a video of the current complainant giving a formal interview to police.
She said she had been out with a friend and had been drinking.
She was “fairly intoxicated” but “not terribly drunk” and was fully aware of everything that was happening.
Her friend left the bar and she decided to stay for one last drink and was chatting with a man she knew.
Once she’d consumed that beverage - her nightmare began.
“After that things become pretty hard to remember… I remember getting into a car with a guy,” she said.
“I don’t remember talking to him, I don’t remember meeting him but I remember getting into his car.’
She said she was not forced into a car but she had no real idea what she was doing or who the man was.
He was not the friend she had been talking to at the bar and was not someone she’d ever seen or engaged with before.
They went to a townhouse somewhere in Christchurch.
“I remember lying on a couch… I didn’t have my jeans off… I don’t remember taking them off… the guy that had taken me home had his hand between my legs,” she said.
There was another man in the room “hovering” and a woman sitting on a chair watching with no emotion on her face.
The man was “encouraging” the accused to do things to the complainant.
She could not remember all of what was being said but recalled him saying to the alleged offender things like “yeah, she likes that”.
“I felt like I could not control what I was doing,” the woman said.
“I remember getting taken upstairs… waking up the next day with the man who’d taken me home… I woke up to another man entering the room… he got into bed…. He was starting to touch me, wanting to initiate something with me.
“I just remember saying ‘stop, get out’ - but not forcefully (because) I felt sedated, strange…
She eventually got home and said for the next three days she felt “really spaced out” and “different” to the morning after a normal night out.
She described the feeling as like coming out of an anaesthetic.
“I just felt blank and… it’s so hard to explain, I couldn’t concentrate, I felt very numb, disorientated is the best way to describe it,” she told the court.
She went online the next day and looked at photos on the bar’s Facebook page and identified one of the men at the house that night.
She then reported the alleged assault to the police.
The court heard there was no dispute that the accused was at the address with the complainant.
However, he denies any sexual contact at all.
This afternoon the man’s lawyer grilled the woman on what happened at the house - and she replied repeatedly she could not remember much of the detail other than the actual physical assault.
The lawyer put to the woman that the assault did not happen.
“You weren’t there,” the woman said, maintaining she was violated by two men.
Judge Mabey must determine whether the violation occurred and, if so, whether there was either consent or a reasonable belief in consent.
The other man has admitted he indecently assaulted the woman at the house.
The trial continues and Judge Mabey is expected to hear from six Crown witnesses.
During the first trial - which could not be reported until last week due to blanket suppression orders - Judge Mabey heard from about 130 witnesses including victims, complainants and their friends and family.
Crown prosecutor Andrew McRae said over a number of years the men “targeted” women at the bar to satisfy their “fixation” with sex.
The women said they were drugged and raped or violated by the men.
The main offenders initially denied all of the charges - but a week into the trial one of them pleaded guilty to 21 charges of sexually assaulting women.
The rest of the charges were defended but Judge Mabey found the two men guilty on a total of 68 charges.
During the trial, harrowing evidence was given by the women who were violated and traumatised by the men.
Their stories are strikingly similar. They went to the bar. They purchased or accepted a drink.
The rest of their night is a blur.
Some made it home untouched - albeit “out of it” or really and unfamiliarly unwell.
Some ended up in the bar toilets or at a nearby venue, sexually assaulted as they ebbed in and out of consciousness. Powerless to control their actions, their bodies, and their voice.
Their memories of the night came in fits, starts, flashbacks - horrifying snippets of a night gone terribly wrong.
They recalled being groped, grabbed, slapped. Their hair being pulled. Their clothes being removed. Being dragged, pinned, trapped.
They recalled violation by one or more of the men - things being done to their bodies that they could not control or stop.
One by one they sat in the dock and gave evidence for the Crown, then faced the often gruelling and graphic cross-examination by the defence.
Their memories of the night were limited but they were all adamant - staunchly so - of one thing.
“I did not consent.”
“I consented to nothing.”
They continued: “We can’t walk, we can’t talk… that is not consent.”
“I definitely wasn’t in a position to consent, there’s no way.”
The women went further:’
“I know it was a sexual assault, no one has the right to try to have sex with us while we are passing out.”
“He was so strong and I couldn’t move… I remember I must have been trying to get away and trying to walk and I couldn’t walk.”
“I was trying to push him off… I just remember my body was feeling really weak and it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to.”
“I was trying to get out.”
Alongside the victims and complainants, Judge Mabey also heard hours of evidence about various chat groups the men participated in - sharing their sexual escapades in explicit detail, their lurid comments and judgments on women and their bodies, plans of how they would achieve their next conquest.
They joked about rape, they joked about roofies - benzodiazepines are often used in drug-facilitated sexual assaults - and they spent an inordinate amount of time graphically outlining their seemingly neverending sexual desires.
The younger of the men joked about drugging his then-partner. They discussed - at length and intimately - women they knew, bar patrons.
There was video too - 14 minutes of crude footage of a woman being raped and assaulted made up of 11 short snippets which the court heard was recorded without her knowledge.
The Crown said the men were “fixated” with sex. They targeted “much younger” women for it and they had a clear “indifference to consent”.
Effectively, if they wanted a woman - they would do what they needed to get her.
“There were occasions where females rejected unwanted sexual advances from the defendants after being given free drugs and or alcohol. These females were significantly younger than the defendants and were not sexually interested,” McRae said.
“Further, [the men worked to] facilitate the administration of the alcoholic drinks, events with stupefying substance. It’s alleged that this was to encourage the atmosphere… to lower the resistance to the advances.”
For three years the “predators” used the bar as a hunting ground, using its toilet cubicles to offend - or leading their prey to another site with the promise of free drinks or recreational drugs and doing the unthinkable to them there in various areas.
But on July 16, 2018, two brave women - one who had turned 18 just days earlier - went to police and started talking and the unravelling of the vulturine offenders began.
Operation Sinatra - led by Detective Inspector Scott Anderson - was born and the complaints about the bar and the men accused by the first two victims started to flow.
If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you’ve ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone contact the Safe to Talk confidential crisis helpline on:
Alternatively, contact your local police station - click here for a list.
If you have been abused, remember it’s not your fault.
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