A prominent Otago man is “relieved” he has been cleared of sexual assault charges against him.<\/p>\n
Yesterday afternoon a jury found the man, who still has interim name suppression, not guilty of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, doing an indecent act on a young person and indecent assault.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the\u00a0Otago Daily Times\u00a0after the verdicts, the defendant said he and his family were “relieved”.<\/p>\n
While waiting more than a year to go to trial he was feeling “stressed” and “sorry that the complaints had ever been made against me, because it\u2019s just against everything that I would stand for”, he said.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s nobody more relieved than me, put it that way.”<\/p>\n
After the verdicts yesterday, the defendant was discharged and hugged his supporters at the back of the courtroom.<\/p>\n
The Crown case was that the defendant had gained the trust of the teenage boy through his role working with youth, and sexually offended against him between 2014 and 2019.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Andrew McRae said the man had groomed the complainant and abused his position of trust.<\/p>\n
“The Crown say that [the defendant] was like a grandfather to the complainant, he was obviously a mentor to him, he encouraged him to be his best and he gained the trust of his parents as well,” Mr McRae said.<\/p>\n
“Things took a sinister turn.”<\/p>\n
He said the complainant had been an honest and believable witness.<\/p>\n
But the jury rejected that narrative, instead believing the defence that the complainant was “a bit of a story-teller”.<\/p>\n
The defendant had “emphatically” denied the allegations and after he was arrested in 2024, told police he would “never ever, ever” sexually abuse the boy.<\/p>\n
“That would be putting aside everything I\u2019ve stood for all my life. It just didn\u2019t happen,” the defendant told Detective Mark Durant.<\/p>\n
In closing to the jury, counsel Philip Hall KC said his client\u2019s police interview had “the ring of honesty” to it.<\/p>\n
“You could almost feel the outrage and disgust in the way he responded to the allegations … he appeared to be absolutely genuine,” Mr Hall said.<\/p>\n
When Det Durant asked the defendant about the allegation he sexually violated the teenager, he replied “not true, absolutely not true”.<\/p>\n
“In his dreams,” the defendant said.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s a likeable enough young man, [but] he exaggerates. He had bits of illusion. He can be a bit of a story-teller,” he said.<\/p>\n
The defendant said he was “appalled” by the allegations.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t know why he\u2019s doing this.”<\/p>\n
The defendant did admit accidentally indecently touching the teenager on one occasion, but said the complainant responded by saying: “I consent, I consent.”<\/p>\n
The Crown relied on an intercepted phone call between the defendant and complainant, during which he apologised for events.<\/p>\n
But Mr Hall said the call could be explained \u2014 the defendant was apologising for the accidental touch.<\/p>\n
“[The complainant\u2019s] evidence is seriously inaccurate, it\u2019s not consistent and it\u2019s implausible.”<\/p>\n
A hearing for final name suppression was scheduled for October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A prominent Otago man is “relieved” he has been cleared of sexual assault charges against him. Yesterday afternoon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-30103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}