The trial of a now 21-year-old charged with five counts of indecent assault against four complainants, two male and two female began yesterday. Media has described the alleged victims as “two men and two women” which obscures the fact that they were all only 16 years old when the alleged indecent assaults occurred.
The accused, who has name suppression until at least the end of the trial, allegedly grabbed and squeezed a man’s testicles, touched another man’s genitals, kissed a woman on her neck and face and groped a second woman’s breast and bottom.
Again I feel that I have to make the point that the alleged victims were NOT men and women but 16-year-old teenagers. You have to ask why the media are portraying them as adults.
“[The accused] firstly put his hand down the front of the pants of two young men,” Johnstone alleged.
“To the second young man he did it twice … This conduct was entirely out of the blue.[…]
A few moments later, Johnstone told the jury, the accused allegedly “lipped his way up the neck of a young woman”.
“He needed to be shoved off,” he said.
Repeated attempts were then made to get the young man to bed and sleep it off, Johnstone said.
But, the prosecutor alleged, the accused made an inappropriate comment to two women helping him before groping one.[…]
Priest, however, said her client “is not a sexual offender”.
“This was not criminal behaviour.”
She said the first charge, an accusation of squeezing a man’s genitals, was the result of the complainant wanting to be “part of the drama” created by other accusations.
The allegations relating to the second complainant, Priest said, simply didn’t happen.
She said her client “did something completely different which was meant as a joke”.
Priest said the accused had a complete defence to the fourth charge, an allegation of unwanted kissing.
“She wanted it,” Priest said. “There is no indecent assault here.”
The final allegation of groping has been described by the complainant as an “intentional fumble”, the court heard.
Priest said her client doesn’t recall any such incident but “is adamant he did not sexually assault her”.
If he cannot recall the incident then surely he cannot also be adamant that he did not assault her. The trial is expected to last 5 days