A former pub manager in Western Australia’s far north has been found guilty of raping one of his workers.<\/p>\n
WARNING: This story contains details of assaults, which some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n
Stewart Patrick Burchell, 51, has been on trial for just over a week in the Broome District Court, accused of preying on five female employees and a patron during his time running the landmark Roebuck Bay Hotel between 2017 and 2023.<\/p>\n
After several hours of deliberation, the jury returned guilty verdicts on the sexual assault charge and nine unlawful and indecent assault charges.<\/p>\n
Burchell was found not guilty of four indecent assault charges.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stewart Burchell was the general manager of the Roebuck Bay Hotel in Broome. (ABC Kimberley: Andrew Seabourne)<\/p>\n
He was initially on trial for 16 charges, but two counts of indecent assault were dropped on Monday due to a lack of evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the course of the trial, the court heard evidence from a number of women, who described an escalating pattern of predatory behaviour from Burchell.<\/p>\n
They said he targeted them with explicit comments and text messages, while also groping some of them inappropriately.<\/p>\n
In the case of one of the women, that culminated with Burchell raping her in her accommodation one night.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old continued to deny any wrongdoing throughout the trial, with defence lawyer Alex Mossop questioning the credibility and accuracy of the women’s claims.<\/p>\n
Burchell was remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former pub manager in Western Australia’s far north has been found guilty of raping one of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,101808,2973,101806,44,101803,101804,101805,101802,101801,101807,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-151743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-broome-news","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-indecent-assault-allegations","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-roebuck-bay-hotel","15":"tag-roebuck-hotel","16":"tag-roey","17":"tag-stewart-burchell","18":"tag-stewart-patrick-burchell","19":"tag-unlawful-and-indecent-assault-charges","20":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}