Man accused of abusing five cousins

Warning: This story contains evidence of a sexual nature that may upset some readers.

“I felt like if I screamed I would wake the house up, but if I didn’t I would get in more trouble.”

A court has heard how a 12-year-old girl woke up to find her aunt’s boyfriend allegedly trying to put his hands down her pants as she lay on the floor next to her sleeping grandmother.

The man is on trial for sexually abusing five cousins, his partner’s nieces and nephews, over a period of around three years.

Many of the incidents are alleged to have occurred at family gatherings, including after communion at a family home in Kawerau, after returning from church in Hamilton and after the funeral of a family member.

The most serious allegations relate to oral sex. According to Tauranga Crown, the defendant forced a teenager to do this – even when the couple was doing household chores after the family had shared communion at home.

The Crown case alleges that the 26-year-old sexually and physically assaulted and sexually violated his cousins, who were between 10 and 15 years old at the time.

Crown prosecutor Catherine Harold outlined the 27 charges the defendant faces in the Tauranga District Court today.

These include cases in which the defendant allegedly attempted to touch genitals, slap bottoms and grope the various children while they were sleeping in their grandmother’s house.

The Crown says it was a whanau house “inhabited by different families at different times”, including the defendant and his partner.

Some of the crimes are said to have taken place in other homes owned by the family and the defendant.

The court heard testimony from the trial’s first minor plaintiff, who was 12 at the time, in a video interview she gave after the alleged crime.

She told the interviewer that when her aunt’s partner first tried to touch her, she was sleeping next to her grandmother in the living room and that there were about 11 people in the house at the time.

She claims when she woke up she saw him attacking her and didn’t know what to do.

She had been wearing sweatpants and a hoodie to keep warm since she didn’t sleep with blankets. She had rolled over to her grandmother’s bed and he stood there.

The girl claimed it happened again, this time early one morning.

She said: “This time I didn’t feel frozen, I moved straight away.”

But the most serious of the alleged offenses against her occurred on another occasion, when she followed his instructions to go into the “man cave,” a small shed in the backyard.

She had gone to get some oranges to make her grandma some juice when the man had told her to “come” and she had gone with him into the little shed.

She said the man took off her pants and sexually assaulted her.

In her video evidence, she said this time she was “frozen” again.

“All I know is that I was scared and afraid of what happened.”

She said she told the defendant she would not tell anyone.

“He wouldn’t let me go, but I said I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Under cross-examination, the girl told defense lawyer David Bates she heard her aunt, the man’s partner, calling her name as the crime took place.

She had left and gone to her aunt.

Bates asked her why she didn’t tell her aunt what happened.

“I was afraid she would screw me over.”

Bates asked the girl if she and her cousins ​​had made up stories to get her aunt’s partner in trouble.

The girl said that wasn’t true.

During cross-examination, Bates also asked why she had gone into the shed with him in the dark if she had been so afraid of him because of his previous attempts to touch her.

The girl said she didn’t know why she agreed to go.

The court also watched the video interview that the second complainant gave to the police.

The court heard how the 11-year-old girl described how, when she first lived with the defendant in a different house to the previous complainant, she enjoyed when he took her on bike rides.

But then he got scary and started slapping her, her cousin and her sister’s butts.

She said he would “take care” of her after he used the toilet, taking out his genitals and playing with them in front of her.

“I didn’t like it,” she said.

She also described being physically attacked by the defendant and hitting her arms and hands.

She asked to be allowed to live in her grandmother’s house again, she said.

The trial continues before Judge David Cameron.