A Napier woman has gone on trial charged with being a party to the alleged rape of her 15-year-old daughter 12 years ago.
The woman denied the charge yesterday at the start of the trial in Napier District Court, as did the man charged with the rape.
The man also denies disabling the girl by stupefaction in the hours before the alleged violation, and the woman denies supplying her daughter with methamphetamine to calm her down after she told her what had happened.
Both accused have interim suppression of name and identity pending the outcome of the trial which, with prosecution evidence completed yesterday and at least one defence witness to be heard, is expected to end today.
The complainant, now in her mid-20s, said that in late 2004 she was collected from her home in Napier and taken by the man to a cottage in Porangahau, about 100km away, despite her understanding she was going to a nearby address.
Worried by what faced her at the rundown cottage in the town - open nakedness of a couple in the cottage, drinking and drug-taking - she said she rang her mother to ask her to come and get her, but her mother assured her everything would be all right.
She said the man gave her some tablets, but she didn't take them and hid them in a bag. She said the man found them, and gave her a drink, but she could not remember anything of what happened after that. She awoke in the morning naked in the bed with the man and became aware they had had sex.
She remembered a fast drive back to Napier in the man's black Mazda, and telling her mother who, she said, gave her a smoke and methamphetamine to "calm" her down.
In a recorded interview played to the court, the mother said she would have gone to authorities had she trusted them, but instead chose to deal with the situation "my way" and got someone to visit the accused man. She said she could not remember who she sent.
The complainant said that after telling her mother she chose to keep it to herself for more than a decade, but eventually spoke up and police began investigating in 2015. The mother said in her interview the suggestion that she was "selling" her daughter was not mentioned until after her daughter's revelations.
The court was also told the complainant went to Porangahau during the investigation and was able to identify the area where she said the events had happened, although the cottage had since been destroyed by fire.
In her opening address, Crown prosecutor Jo Rielly said that when interviewed by police the man denied the allegations and when asked if he knew the woman and her daughter he recalled the mother as "a druggie skank" who had a "mouthy" daughter.
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This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission.
