Raveen Saily says he believed a teen had consented to have sex with him in an Arataki public changing room in Mount Maunganui.
Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find upsetting.
A man charged with the rape and sexual violation told police he believed the 16-year-old girl had consented.
“I did not want to rape her or anything, I did get consent and all that.”
Raveen 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 teen says she was threatened by the then-20-year-old that if she didn’t do as she was told, he would harm her with a knife.
In a police video statement that was played in court, Saily said he may have had a knife with him, as the girl alleged, as he sometimes carried one.
But, he said he didn’t use it or threaten her with it.
“I’ve met girls you know who have liked that stuff,” he said, referring to the use of a knife during sexual acts.
“I’m not saying I did [use a knife], but if I did, it wouldn’t have been threatening.”
He admitted the teen had given him oral sex, but said he had asked her “if she was down to, you know, f*** or something, and she was like ‘yeah’”.
He said she had agreed to oral sex, “normal f***ing” and anal sex.
When the police officer asked him to clarify what he meant by “normal” he said, “just putting it in there pretty much”.
He said he hadn’t used protection because his “pull-out game” was “good”, and later clarified that he had checked with her that she didn’t have any sexually transmitted diseases.
He had been “pretty sure” that she couldn’t get pregnant through anal sex, so didn’t need to use protection or withdrawal in that scenario, again telling the officer he had sought consent.
When the police officer told him that the 16-year-old said all the sexual contact happened without consent, and because she felt threatened, he said it was “total bull****”.
He later said, “To my belief, she did agree.”
Saily did concede that she may have been intimated or scared because he was a man and could seem “dominating and all that”, but said he wasn’t aware she had those feelings at the time.
He later said he was “pretty honest and pretty chill around girls”.
It was only after she allegedly blocked him on social media that he said he felt some regret about what had happened.
“She sort of blocked me and it sort of made me feel a bit s***, I was pretty confused.”
He had wanted to have an ongoing relationship with the girl, he said.
The teen alleges that it was Saily who blocked her on social media, and she discovered this while she was on the bus home after the alleged sexual attack.
The Crown case is Saily and the teen were introduced by a friend of the girl, who’d met Saily online.
The three of them met up at Bayfair Mall in Mount Maunganui and, after that, Saily and the complainant began messaging over Snapchat where he allegedly used the alias “John”.
The girl didn’t know his proper name, and he allegedly didn’t use it on the social media profile he was talking to her on.
On October 25, 2021, the girl caught the bus to Bayfair to meet him for a second time. They then went for a walk around the nearby Arataki Skatepark.
The court heard Saily had a flip knife with him, which he threw at the ground intermittently as they walked, and CCTV footage was played that appeared to show that.
During cross-examination, Saily’s lawyer Bill Nabney put to the teen that she hadn’t been surprised when there was a knife there that day, because they’d already discussed “kinky knife stuff”.
She 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 also said in court that she had felt pressured to agree to perform oral sex, when they were messaging, but had done so reluctantly.
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.
The Crown alleges that on the way to the Arataki Community Centre’s changing room and toilet block, Saily forcefully grabbed the girl’s arm, pulled her toward the entrance of the changing rooms, and said “Get inside, I’ve got a knife”.
The teen told the court she reluctantly went inside as she didn’t feel she had enough fitness to run away.
She says she was forced to perform oral sex on him, after he’d removed her dress, touched her breasts, and pulled down her underwear.
The oral sex caused her discomfort to the point she vomited, at which point Saily stopped and said they should have sexual intercourse.
She also says he drew his knife across her breast, and a photo was produced as an exhibit that showed a scratch alleged to have been caused by this.
The girl says he raped her, forcing her onto his lap, before he further violated her, as she repeatedly said “no”.
The defence case is she made up the allegations because she regretted what had happened, and didn’t want to get in trouble with her parents.
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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