A Christchurch religious figure has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen sex-related and violence crimes.<\/p>\n
The 45-year-old entered not guilty pleas in the Christchurch District Court to 14 charges of unlawful sexual connection, indecent assault, strangulation, and rape involving four women.<\/p>\n
The man, who has name suppression, appeared via video link to a packed courtroom.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Allister Davis put forward an application for bail, which was granted by Judge Quentin Hicks.<\/p>\n
Released to a house in Auckland, the man\u2019s bail conditions prevented him from leaving the property or contacting the complainants and church members.<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Deidre Elsmore argued the accused was a flight risk due to the church\u2019s ties to Australia and the Pacific Islands, where he has extensive wealth and international contacts.<\/p>\n
She claimed the man could influence victims and their families as he \u201cstill has close contact with members of the church\u201d.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Allister Davis said he has his client\u2019s passport \u201con my file which I am prepared to surrender to the court\u201d and that, due to the claims coming from Christchurch, the man wouldn\u2019t have the opportunity to influence witnesses.<\/p>\n
He will next appear in court on April 23 where name suppression will be reviewed.<\/p>\n
\u2013 reporting by Mason Herbert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Christchurch religious figure has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen sex-related and violence crimes. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[158,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-380441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380441","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=380441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}