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The entertainment figure faces 25 charges – mostly for sex crimes – but can’t be named until a decision on name suppression on Monday.
The lawyer for a high-profile entertainment industry figure says the man’s sex crime charges are the result of a “Me Too fest” and “haters” – but one complainant says he forced drug-covered fingers into her mouth and raped her.
A trial for the man, who can’t be named for legal reasons, got underway at the High Court in Rotorua on Thursday after it was dogged by delays and the failure to find 12 jurors.
He faces 25 charges, including rape, indecent assault, sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, assault with intent to commit sexual violation, attempted sexual violation, indecent assault and attempting to pervert justice.
He also faces drug and burglary charges, and the allegations refer to multiple North Island locations.
Musician Tiki Taane will give evidence later in the trial, the jury of nine women and three men heard during the Crown and defence opening addresses.
Crown prosecutor Anna Pollett listed allegations, including a claim the man forced himself on a woman, and that in an Auckland restaurant he “dipped his fingers in white powder” and pushed them into a woman’s mouth.
Pollett said the woman was drunk and unable to give consent for the sexual activity that followed.
“The defendant knew she was not in any state to consent,” she said.
One alleged rape victim was told after the assault “that’s what sluts deserve”, Pollett said, and the man also allegedly let himself into a woman’s house and she awoke to find him on top of her.
“She thought she was going to be raped,” Pollett said.
Pollett said the man had approached a relative of two complainants, once charges had been laid, and told him he had “hired the best lawyer in town to discredit [them] if they took the stand”.
She said one complainant, allegedly drugged before being assaulted, said she was “too embarrassed to go to the police”.
“She was not in control of her body and he was too popular.”
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC began his brief opening by telling the jury the Crown had painted his client in “the worst case possible”.
He also said the man himself would give evidence, and that “the allegations don’t represent anything close to what happened”.
The man was popular, he said, so didn’t need to “resort to that type of technique to have sex with women”.
He described his client as a man who had gone “from rags to riches”, and that while “many in our community adore him, along come the haters”.
“He’s bent a few noses. . . they are more than willing to see this man fall down.”
He also admitted his client had enjoyed “sex and drugs and rock’n roll” but that his behaviour “certainly didn’t involve drugging women”.
Mansfield said most complainants came from the same “sex, drugs and rock’n roll” background, and that police had actively sought out people to make allegations.
“A Me Too fest. . . people reinventing the night they spent with him,” he said.
“Reimagined into an account that sounds like a sexual assault.”
He said that from the first complainant onwards, they would “start to hear from the me toos” and asked the jury to keep an open mind.
The trial is set down for six weeks.
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