Boy for trial on charge of assaulting pensioner

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 5

Boy for trial on charge of assaulting pensioner

A boy, aged 14, will face trial in the High Court on charges of assaulting a woman pensioner, aged 74, with intent to commit sexual violence, and theft of $l9, a transistor radio, a tablecloth, and sewing equipment, of a total value of $5O, from the woman’s flat.

Judge Fraser yesterday committed the schoolboy for trial after a depositions hearing held during two days in the Children and Young Persons Court.

The alleged offences were said to have occurred in the woman’s pensioner flat on February 17. At the completion of the hearing the Judge lifted a previous order suppressing evidence in the case. The Judge remanded the defendant on bail, with curfew provisions, pending a date for his trial by jury in the High Court. Counsel for the defendant, Miss E. H. B. Thompson, reserved the defence.

Detective Sergeant N. R. Scott prosecuted. The complainant’s statement, which was read to the Court by the prosecutor on the first day of the hearing last month, was that a boy called at her pensioner cottage on February 17 and asked for 10c to make a telephone call. She offered him something to eat or drink.

She said he seemed a pleasant boy but “turned nasty” and started looking through her belongings. He smacked her face several times and held the blade of a kitchen knife to her throat. He told her to co-operate and she would be all right. She told him to leave, and called for help but nobody answered.

He removed her clothing and put her on her bed and had intercourse with her, and urinated on her. He had his hands round her throat and tied

her hands with a towel or stockings. He then looked for something to steal, and cut open two suitcases and left her flat, taking a transistor radio, $2O from her handbag, and her back-door key. Before leaving he told her not to tell the police. The next morning a neighbour knocked on her door. When she opened the door she saw the same boy standing with the neighbour. He had a blue bicycle, and a black dog with him. The boy called back at her address that evening. The complainant said she could not lock the door because the boy had stolen her key. He gave her back her key and said he wanted some biscuits. She gave him some. While he was sitting at the table eating the biscuits the police arrived.

The complainant said she had not told the boy to leave, before the police arrived, because she did not want him to “turn nasty again.” She was scared of him.

She said the boy who was at her flat when the police arrived was the same boy who had called that morning and the previous evening. A neighbour of the complainant gave evidence of seeing the defendant knock at the complainant’s door at 11.30 a.m. on February 18. Witness asked the defendant if he was getting a reply and the defendant said he was not. Witness then went to the door and knocked sharply. The complainant called — out, “Is that you, you young —, I’m not letting you in.” Wit.ness'answered and the complainant opened the door, saw the defendant, ana said ne had tried to rape her the night before.

The defendant denied it and said it must have been some other boy.

Witness telephoned the police while trying to keep watch on the defendant but the latter rode away on his bicycle. Cross-examined, the witness said the complainant told him the boy attempted to rape her. After she made the accusation the boy did not make off straight away. A married woman gave evidence that the defendant, whom she had known for five years, called at

her house on the evening of February 17, carrying a transistor radio and sewing cottons. He gave her the cottons and asked her to look after the radio. She asked where he had got them and he said “from an old lady’s place” and that she was not home. The police called the next day and took the items. Medical evidence was given that the com-

plainant, when examined on February 18, had a contusion on the right cheek and swelling and bruising of her upper lip and brusing lower cheek, mere were no otner areas of bruising on her body and no evidence of penetration of the vaginal or anal areas. The complainant was agitated and it was difficult to elucidate a clear history of events leading up to the alleged assault. She was mildly confused.

Evidence of an interview of the defendant by a detective was suppressed by the preliminary hearing on grounds specified by Miss Thompson.

Miss Thompson called evidence from a neighbour of the complainant who said that she kept watch on the complainant’s house after hearing of an assault on her.

The next evening she saw a young man looking through the complainant’s rear window. She watched him for several minutes before he moved off.

Later, she saw policemen taking a young boy away from the complainant’s house. This boy was not the person she had seen at the window, as the latter person was much larger and more solidly, built.

The woman said there were many “drunks and prowlers” in the area.