SUPREME COURT Woman Permitted Premises To Be Used As Brothel

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31169, 20 September 1966, Page 12

SUPREME COURT Woman Permitted Premises To Be Used As Brothel

After standing trial on a charge of permitting premises to be used as a brothel, a 64-year-old Auckland woman, Flora McKenzie, was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday.

Mr Justice Macarthur remanded her in custody for sentence on Friday. McKenzie, who pleaded not guilty was charged in respect of a property she owns and at which she resides, at 19 Ring terrace, Ponsonby, Auckland but the defence having sought a change of venue, the case was tried in Christchurch.

McKenzie was defended by Mr L. P. Leary, Q.C., with him Mr P. A. Williams. The Crown conceded that a second charge afainst McKenzie, of keeping a brothel at the same premises, was dismissed by Auckland justices of the peace after a lower court hearing. But the Crown Prosecutor (Mr C. M. Roper) suggested to the Supreme Court jury that it should have no difficulty in deciding that McKenzie, on or about September 10 last year, knowingly permitted her premises to be used for prostitution.

Visits to Premises Evidence of visits to McKenzie’s premises was given by three constables of the Auckland special duties branch of the police one of whom, Constable A. J. Leyland, said that a room in which one of their men was found with a naked girl, and £5 in notes on the dresser, appeared to be McKenzie’s own bedroom. Constable R. D. Waitai, who had been in the room with the girl, waiting for a raiding party to arrive, gave evidence of various telephone contacts with McKenzie asking “to go with one #f her girls” and visits to her premises.

On a visit on September 6, which he made with a friend (not a policeman), said Constable Waitai, McKenzie had turned the conversation to sexual matters, and instructed a girt named Rae Chappell to take his friend to a bedroom (after he himself had said he “could not afford it”), at the same time making suggestive remarks about the girl’s figure.

On the evening of September 10, said Constable Waitai, he and another friend (also

not a policeman) went to McKenzie’s premises by previous arrangement, and were shown through a back door into a sun lounge. There were present McKenzie, two girls, and two other men. After drinks, the girl Rae Chappell asked him: “Who’ll be paying for it tonight?” McKenzie had instructed the girl which bedroom to use, said Constable Waitai. He followed the girl through a bathroom into a bedroom where she undressed and lay on the bed. He asked her where to put the money (previously marked) and was told to put it on the dresser. Special-dut-ies police then entered the room.

Under cross-examination by Mr Williams, Constable Waitai denied that as a result of his visits he had become interested in the girl Chappell. “I was interested in the accused,” he said. Mr Williams: You had been there four times, and only once got a girl in a bedroom by herself, and a girl you had a soft spot for? Witness: No, that is not so.

Constable J. H. Philpott gave evidence that as the police party entered with a search warrant, and made towards the bedroom, McKenzie called out: “There’s a girl in there with her boy friend.” Further evidence by Constable Philpfrtt as to remarks McKenzie was alleged to have made when she followed the police into the bedrom, was objected to by Mr Leary, and ruled inadmissible by his Honour, after being heard in the jury’s absence. Constable Leyland said that on McKenzie following him to the bedroom, he pointed to the naked girl, and asked McKenzie for an explanation. McKenzie had said: "It’s her boy friend from Wellington,” and had denied running a brothel. Defence Case Mr Leary said that the defence case would rest on the proposition that McKenzie’s premises had none of the indications of a brothel. There was no proof of any act of sexual intercourse. “There may have been a little hard talk,” Mr Leary said. “But it is so easy to gather little things together and make them into a case against my poor, old client.”

“Where are the signs of a brothel?” asked Mr Leary. There was no evidence of any continuity of conduct of the premises as such. What had happened between the girl and Constable Waitai was no more than happened in every hotel in New Zealand, when a man and a woman, obviously unmarried,

booked into a hotel room together for the night. “Would it be suggested that any hotel proprietor who has a shrewd idea of what is going on in that room could be had up for permitting his premises to be used as a brothel?” said Mr Leary.

Mr Roper, for the Crown, said that the case was an important one from the public point of view, for the jury by its verdict would set standards of community behaviour. The jury was 20 minutes in reaching its verdict of guilty.