Assault case jury excluded

Press, 16 June 1983, Page 18

Assault case jury excluded

PA Napier A High Court jury was excluded by .Mr Justice Eichelbaum when legal argument was heard in the case of an Australian naval rating charged with assaulting a woman with intent to commit rape. The rating, Rodney Jennings Martin, aged 25, who visited Napier in the Australian warship H.M.A.S. Vampire, has denied the charge, arising from an incident on January 30 last year.

The jury of six men and six women was excluded at 4 p.m. on Monday and his Honour suppressed publication of the argument. The jury returned at 3 p.m. on Tuesday. The complainant, aged 32 at the ime of the alleged offence, continued to give her evidence.

The woman wept while recalling the incident under cross-examination.

The woman said she had been able to identify Martin as her assajlant from a photograph shown

to her by the police. She admitted knowing that the police had obtained a photograph from Australia and expected it to be among photographs to be shown to her at the police station. On Monday the woman was not able to identify her alleged assailant in the courtroom. The jury was told during the opening address that Martin had grown a beard between his first interview in Australia on behalf of the New Zealand police, and the start of extradition proceedings. The woman told the jury she had, early on the morning of January 30, visited the city take-away bar and bought cigarettes. She said her de facto husband had gone out earlier in the evening and she decided to see if he was with friends in Creagh Street. While walking along Hastings Street opposite the Napier Travel Inn, formerly the Travelodge, she noticed a person on the other side of the road. The man then ran across the road and grabbed her round the neck. She

began screaming. He put his hand over her mouth and told her to stop screaming and he would not hurt her. She said she was then dragged down an alleyway opposite the Travel Inn and into a disused car lot, where she was pushed to the ground and indecently assaulted.

The woman said she realised she had to calm down to enable her escape, and asked the man for a cigarette. After she had smoked it, he pushed her to the ground and started removing her clothes.

She said that while the man at several attempts made intercourse she tried calm him down and managed to get him off guard. Naked, the woman ran off along Marine Parade, banging on the doors and windows of houses.

She then ran down Dickens Street and managed to get people in a car parked at a burger bar to take ( her to the police station.