KEY POINTS:
Tears welled in the eyes of a relief teacher accused of having sex with and indecently assaulting a 14-year-old student as a jury found him not guilty on all charges in Gisborne District Court yesterday.
It took the jury 2 1/2 hours to find Janus Herewini Warmenhoven, 29, not guilty of having sexual intercourse with and two counts of indecently assaulting a girl aged between 12 and 16. As the final verdict was read, he wiped a tear from his cheek.
Warmenhoven had name suppression up to and during the trial to protect his right to a fair hearing as he had faced charges in Australia in April last year.
A Brisbane Supreme Court jury had found him not guilty of murder and manslaughter.
He was accused of killing his former girlfriend's 10-month-old daughter in Brisbane in February 2003.
The charges in the Gisborne court this week related to alleged events during a party in a rural East Coast town in January 2004.
Defence counsel Nicola Wright told the jury that these things simply did not happen.
The girl made up this story so she could brag about it to her friends, Mrs Wright said.
For the prosecution, Nicola Graham said Warmenhoven was a man considered quite handsome who was liked by students and who many of the girls had a crush on.
He sometimes socialised with his students out of hours, often at parties. "At one of those parties, less than a month after school year ended, he hooked up with a student."
- NZPA
