The courts Brain-injured man convicted of rape attempt

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 15

The courts

Brain-injured man convicted of rape attempt

A man, who had suffered head injuries, suddenly had a personality change while visiting a young woman in the early hours, struck her and threatened to rape her, Mr Justice Roper and a jury were told in the High Court yesterday. After deliberating for 45 minutes the jury found Richard Robert Raymond Gorrie guilty on a charge of assaulting a woman, aged 26, with intent to rape on December 4, 1982. Mr B. M. Stanaway appeared for the Crown which called two witnesses and Mr M. J. Glue and Ms L. A. Dalziel for Gorrie, who gave evidence. The defence called one other witness. His Honour remanded Gorrie until tomorrow for sentence. The woman said that she had met Gorrie at an engagement party in November, 1982. At the end of the evening Gorrie said that he had enjoyed talking to her and asked for her telephone number and she gave it to him.

The next Tuesday, November 29, Gorrie asked by telephone if she would go out with him on Saturday evening. She asked him to call back on the Thursday which he did. They arranged to go to a nearby hotel. Some 20 minutes later the telephone rang and a voice said, “It’s Ricky here, I won’t be taking you out on Saturday night. I can’t.” The telephone was then hung up. On the Saturday morning Gorrie telephoned, apologising for hanging up on her and asked her to go out with him that evening. Because she had been out on the Friday evening with her girlfriend and made a practice of not going out two nights in a row she declined. Gorrie accepted that as a reasonable explanation and they had a friendly conversation for about 15 minutes. She informed him that she was not interested in going out with him as a boyfriend but just as a companion to talk to. She asked him about his job applications. About 1.40 a.m. on Sunday the woman said that she was asleep in bed when Gorrie arrived at the front door. He said that he wanted to apologise to her in person. They went into the lounge and sat on the couch a little distance apart. Gorrie said that he had been to a show at a hotel. The discussion was friendly. “Next thing he started to move closer to me and put his left hand around the back of the couch. I told him that it would be better if he left and gave me a ring during the week. “Very quickly he put his arm up and around my throat and whacked me on the side of the face with his right hand. It was more of a flick than a punch. I burst into tears and was in the process of telling him that I had thought that he was nice when he snarled ‘shut up’ and his whole attitude had totally changed,” the woman said. He started yelling and screaming that all women were “... sluts” and that he was going to have sex with her whether she wanted it or not. If she did not give it to him voluntarily he was going to beat her up. Gorrie told her that he was a schizophrenic. “I got angry and stopped crying and told him, ‘No way. Nobody comes into my home and threatens to do this to me.’ By this stage he had undone his trousers and fly and said that if I gave it to him I would never see him again. I was scared that if I did I had no guarantee that he wasn’t going to slit my throat once I got into the bedroom and I had no intention of putting myself in that position,” said the woman. Gorrie continued to hold her by the throat and he' told her that she was going to have oral sex with him. She was angry and screamed at him, “Look around you, do you think I would bloody stay at home five years to get a nice

home for my son so some: bastard like you can come * along and do this to me?” She implied that her young son was at home but he was not. She told him that he would have to beat her up if he was going to have sex with her and that he had better make a good job of it because her son would wake up and the neighbours would hear. At that stage she heard a car coming up the drive and she told Gorrie that it was the woman from next door and that when she saw the light on she would walk straight through the door and would see what he was doing. Gorrie said that he did not hear anything and accused her of trying- to him. Then he saw* the

lights and loosened his grip on her so that she was able to run out the front door.

As she ran up to the car she burst into tears and said to the woman, “This guy Ricky has just tried to rape me and had me in a headlock.”

As she turned she saw Gorrie coming out the front door doing up his trousers and as he want down the lane she yelled, “I don’t want to ever see you up here again.” She telephoned the police from the neighbour’s unit. To Mr Glue the woman said that at the time she was aged 25 and Gorrie was aged 20. She had had no suspicion that he was backward or that he was psychiatrically disturbed. He had said that he wanted to become a chef. The woman denied ridiculing Gorrie or telling him that he was a stupid little

boy. It did not appear that Gorrie was immature and she did not have any romantic interest in him, she said.

Mr Glue asked if she felt she and Gorrie had anything in common at all. “Yes,” she said.

“Not many months before I was feeling depressed, lonely and that society had treaded pretty heavy on me. I did something about it and attended a course which helped me regain some confidence in myself. I had only finished the course a week before I met Gorrie and I felt that maybe he could have benefited from it.”

Constable Peter John Coom said that Gorrie had denied that he was going to have sex with the woman or to force her to have sex. He admitted that he had had his arm around her on the couch to prevent her from getting up. It was correct that he had told her that all women were...sluts and he made a remark about hating all women, Constable Coom said.

In evidence Gorrie said that he was serving a 12 months prison term in Paparua Prison on charges of assault on. a female and assault with intent to facilitate flight after committing a crime.

A couple of years ago he had been involved in a car accident and had had his head smashed in. A year before that in the same month he had suffered concussion in a motor-cycle accident.

He drank all the time and continued to drink after he got the head injuries. It was not true that he told the constable that he did not like women, but it could be true when he had been

drinking and was upset. When he went to the woman’s place in the early hours he had been drinking all night at a hotel. He did not tell her that he had come to apologise as she had claimed.

Because he was in a bad mood he had slapped the woman’s face once. She had called him a silly little boy. He had not said anything about having sex with her. To Mr Stanaway, Gorrie said that he had gone to see the woman in the early hours because he was in a real vicious mood but he could not remember what caused it. In a way he had gone around to teach her a lesson because of the way she acted. She had asked him all those questions.

Asked to look at some notes he had signed Gorrie said, “I have just got to tell you something. It’s embarrassing but I can’t read very well.” Gorrie denied putting the woman in a headlock.

Dr Donald Arthur Quick, psychiatric registrar at Sunnyside Hospital, who appeared on subpoena, said that he had examined Gorrie in respect of another matter.

Gorrie had expressed an overwhelming angry urge to hurt a female. He had left one project employment programme scheme because the boss was a woman. He said he hated women and described them as sluts. In two motor accidents Gorrie had suffered head injuries and he had also been involved in altercations in which he had been knocked out by blows to the head. As a result he had brain damage. After being in steady work for three years until the accident Gorrie lost his job and his doctor felt that there had been a definite deterioration in his dexterity and judgment. He became more isolated as he lost friends through angry outbursts which became increasingly frequent. Sexually Gorrie was quite immature emotionally but physically he was a normal adult male. His intelligence was in the dull borderline range. Gorrie had a low tolerance of frustration. He was immature, egocentric, and had a lack of skill in social relationships. Those factors combined with a limited intelligence, a history of brain injury and a huge resentment towards women rendered him very likely to react violently in certain situations, especially if he had taken alcohol. In fact Gorrie had recognised some of his problems and had asked for help, Dr Quick said.