Lecturer says women tried to kill him

Press, 7 April 1984, Page 2

Lecturer says women tried to kill him

PA Auckland A University of Auckland lecturer, Mr Mervyn Thompson, says he feared he would be killed when six women abducted him, chained him to a tree, and publicly accused him of being a rapist. In a statement to appear in next week’s issue of the “Listener,” Mr Thompson, senior drama lecturer in the University’s English department, said the women seemed to be intent on murder. The incident occurred on February 1 when he was lured to a suburban address, overpowered and chained to a tree near the zoo. His attackers spray-painted the word “rapist” on the side of his car.

Since then, a pamphlet alleging he was a rapist had been circulated at the university, saying he created and used situations to force women to have sex with him.

Mr Thompson writes that he had never raped anyone — “either in the legal or feminist sense.” He said he found it diffi-

cult to think of a crime more abhorrent. He knew none of the woman and guessed that they were acting on rumour and wanted to make an example of someone. “The possibility also exists that I was deliberrately set up as a chosen victim. “As a person working in the theatre ... I have a relatively high profile and, possibly, a special talent for making enemies.” Mr Thompson said that he had been telephoned and asked to interview a student at home. He said he reluctantly drove to the address he had been given and was immediately attacked. “The woman leaps at me, all claws and fangs,” Mr Thompson says. “Simultaneously, someone . . . jumps in the driver’s side and hits me a stinging blow on the side of the head. “Before I know where I am, the car seems to be full of people of murderous intent.

“I fight back as best I can, but have no room to manoeuvre.

“Someone is trying to

throttle me. I am short of breath and threatening to pass out . . .” Mr Thompson says he initially presumed the attack to be a mugging but, as blows to his head persisted, he believed the women were trying to kill him. He says he screamed for help and pleaded for an explanation but, after a long struggle, the women managed to chain him to a tree. Their actions, he says, were brutish while the feeling he encountered was hatred. “It seems that among extremist elements of the feminist movement a semantic chain operates which permits words to take on any meaning that is desired,” Mr Thompson says. “Feminist rhetoric steps where facts have never trod. “A man shows an interest in a woman and before he know where he is, he is being accused of sexual harassment. “It takes very little intellectual juggling before an even more serious smearword appears — rape.”