Girl Tells Story of Savage Assault

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 641, 18 April 1929, Page 1

Girl Tells Story of Savage Assault

MORNINGSIDE SENSATION MAN FACES GRAVE CHARGES Grave allegations were made in the Police Court this morning against Bertram James O’Connor, aged 34, a married painter. Besides facing charges or Indecent assault, obscene exposure and using obscene language, it was alleged that he was the assailant in the brutal attack on a young girl at Morningslde on the night of March 28. Long evidence was heard against the accused man this morning. He pleaded not guilty. charges against O’Connor -were that, on March 31, he indecently j assaulted a girl aged four and a-half, | that, on March 28, he assaulted a girl of 20, causing actual bodily harm, that, on February 20, he commited wilful, obscene exposure in the Morningside Recreation Reserve, and that, on the same day, he used obscene language. The central figure at the opening of the case was the victim of the Morningside assault. She replied quietly to all of the questions put by DetectiveSergeant Kelly. O’Connor elected to be dealt with in the Supreme Court on the first three charges. He showed a lively interest in the evidence, and obtained permission to question several of the witnesses. O’Connor stated his wish to be certain of all the dates mentioned in evidence. "How can a man defend himself if these dates are not stated clearly?” he asked the court. VICTIM’S STORY Graphic accounts of the attack were given by the victim and the man who came to her help. In her evidence the girl told of her vain attempt to avoid a man who came out of the reserve and followed her in Western Springs Road. She was walking along by the reserve when a man came out. She soon saw that he was following her. Witness bent down, ostensibly to adjust her shoelace, to let the man pass, but when she straightened up, the man struck her with an iron bar. Ghe called for help, and the man ran away. Witness told how she identified the accused at an identification parade as the man who struck her. Before the assault, she said, she had not seen the accused. The girl witness was closely questioned by O’Connor from the dock on the manner in which she identified him. Robert Graham, who came to the girl’s aid, told how he w-as attracted from his home by the screaming of a girl. SOAKED WITH BLOOD “Blood was streaming down her face, and she was saturated to the waist,” Mr. Graham said. Witness saw no one else on the [road. The girl was in a state of collapse, and he called a doctor. Medical evidence was to the effect that the girl had a severe gash, one and a-half inches long, on her head, and required treatment. Two women residents near the reserve related, their observations of the accused the reserve. In reply to a queltion from DetectiveSergeant Kelly, one woman said that O’Connor frequently watched children playing. An electrician, J. W. Brandon, said that the scene of the attack was well lit by an electric light. Constable D. McGlone’, of Kingsland. said that he searched the locality and found, at the entrance to the reserve, a piece of galvanised, iron piping, 14 to 16 inches long. Mr. McGlone said that he had known O’Connor for four years. “GOOD SAMARITAN” Mr. Kelly: Have you seen him about Morningside reserve? —Frequently. Mr. Kelly: What did he generally do?—O’Connor acted the “Good Samaritan” and often gave children swings. The constable said that on one occasion he had reason to follow O’Con- ; nor’s movements. “Why did you follow me?” O'Connor I demanded from the dock. “ITI jog your memory soon,” the j witness warned accused. O’Connor persisted in his demands j for the information and eventually the ! magistrate, Mr. F. K. Hunt, instructed I the witness: “Jog his memory, then.” ! “t had reason to follow you,” the i constable said. “J followed, you to j

the home of two young children and you were loitering outside the house.” ■Detective-Sergeant P. Doyle told how he, accompanied by Detective O’Sullivan, searched the locality of the attack from March 28 until April 11, on which date O’Connor, when interviewed, said he had been at home at the time of the assault. “O’Connor said he had read about the assault in the pap’ers,” Mr. Doyle sacii, “but, up to then, no mention had been made in any of the’ papers. When O’Connor was. first in court, he said to me: ‘I made a mistake when I told you I was home that night, a Thursday. It was on the Friday that I was home to allow my wife to go to hospital. 1 was at church on the Thursday.’ ” The case was adjourned until this afternoon.