You're Under Arrest

A woman who went to the police to complain of rape was herself charged with having underage sex with her alleged assailant. She says the experience has broken her.

- Donna Chisholm

A Wellington woman who found herself on trial after alleging that she’d been raped by a teenage boy says she has lost all faith in the police. The 31-year-old was acquitted at a jury trial, but police have not pursued the 14-year-old she accused of rape.

Speaking publicly for the first time about her ordeal, the woman we’ll call Bex (her name is suppressed) told the Listener the experience left her “broken” and suicidal. “I personally wouldn’t go to the police again,” she says.

The boy she claims raped her was the son of her lesbian fiancée, who supported her when she laid the complaint, saying she recognised her son needed help. But at a trial in July last year, the fiancée testified for the prosecution. Bex was ultimately acquitted of three charges of sexual connection with a young person, and wilfully attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Bex’s lawyer, Michael Bott, says he has heard of accusers being charged with making a false complaint, but he cannot recall a rape complainant being herself tried for a sex crime as a direct result of the allegation. The prosecution left him “dumbstruck”.

“What was bizarre in this case is that there doesn’t appear to have been any serious analysis of the substance of the charges at all and the evidence supporting and contradicting it.” He says the police took the view that Bex made false allegations against the boy to get him into trouble.

Louise Nicholas, an advocate for victims of sexual violence, says she believes police failed the woman “miserably” by doing what Nicholas calls a “half-arsed” investigation. She believes they should look at the case anew now that the woman has been acquitted.

“People might say 14-year-old boys don’t do this. They do.”