Alleged rape victim forced to dress up

Alleged sex offender Frank Russell Walmsley faces 101 charges, including 16 rape charges. Photo: ODT
Alleged sex offender Frank Russell Walmsley faces 101 charges, including 16 rape charges. Photo: ODT
A former Oamaru Child, Youth and Family caregiver is alleged to have raped a teenage girl under his care six times and forced her to wear the "lacy, yucky underwear'' of his wife, as well as the clothes of his daughter, who was about the girl's age.

The first of eight complainants to give evidence in the trial of Frank Russell Walmsley (57) in the Timaru District Court concluded her testimony yesterday.

Walmsley faces 101 charges dating back to 1995, including 16 rape charges involving eight teenagers.

He has pleaded not guilty.

The complainant yesterday told the jury of six men and six women she was repeatedly raped, forced to "play dress up'', escaped by using LSD and alcohol and slept with a knife under her pillow because she feared the man who was supposed to be taking care of her for several months during the late 1990s.

When she was at the CYF home in Oamaru, she was raped in her bedroom, in the bathroom and in the bushes in the park behind the house, she said.

Once, after crashing out, high and drunk and "wearing long pants'', she woke up to find Walmsley standing over her and discovered she was wearing a "slutty'' short skirt and a colourful shirt, clothing she did not own.

One night, after being chased through the park and dragged into the bushes to be raped, she could remember him saying: "Don't tell anyone''.

He covered her mouth so she could not scream but when he removed his hand she was too scared to make any noise.

She said she watched cars pass by on the nearby road as Walmsley made "grunting'' noises and sounded like he was "enjoying himself''.

Defence counsel Craig Ruane asked her why she never mentioned the attacks until the police approached her on March 1, 2015.

She had not mentioned in her earlier testimony that she had shared a room with a girl who had shared a social worker with her in later life.

The name of the boy who had comforted her one night was made up.

And he questioned how it could be that nobody heard any of the rapes she alleged happened.

"It's either something you have imagined or made up, but Mr Walmsley didn't do that to you,'' Mr Ruane said.

"And again, I'm going to put to you the suggestion that he had sexual intercourse with you on that occasion is just wrong - didn't happen.''

The woman replied to Mr Ruane: "You weren't there, mate''.

Crown prosecutor Andrew McRae said the second complainant had "a number of visits and stayed relatively short periods of time'' at the home in the mid-1990s.

He asked the woman when her first impression of Walmsley changed.

One night, shortly after arriving at the home as a teenager, she refused to eat the boiled carrots served for dinner.

After Walmsley's wife, their three children and a boy staying at the home had left the table, she was pulled out of her chair and thrown to the floor, the woman said.

She was kicked on her left hand side "pretty hard'' by Walmsley, who was wearing "old man slippers'' at the time.

"We don't waste food around here,'' she reported him saying.

She was made to say goodnight at the home, she said.

"I had to give them [Walmsley and his wife] a kiss and a cuddle goodnight. He put his arms right round me and he rubbed the side of my breast.'' she said through tears.

The kisses goodnight were also inappropriate - "he would try to kiss me on the lips''.

She woke up one night with the "tie of her pyjamas being undone and a hand just above her pubic bone'' and seeing Walmsley in the glow of her night-light.

On one occasion, after coming home late with another boy at the house, she was taken to an office and told to bend over, she said.

Her school uniform kilt was lifted, her shorts were lowered, as was her underwear, and Walmsley searched her "bottom'' for cigarettes and cannabis.

It hurt so much, afterwards she went to the bathroom to see if she was bleeding, she said.

For about a week she was made to sleep in the sleepout in the backyard, and one night he attempted to rape her, she said.

"I heard the door open,'' she said.

"I was freaking out because I had a feeling it would be him.

"I kind of froze, hoping that he wouldn't come any closer to me.

"My blankets got pulled down, and my pants got pulled down, and he said: ‘You know you want this'.''

Ultimately, she was told she was "too tight'', she said.

After he left, she said she looked for something to lock the door with, but ended up pushing her bed against the door "so he couldn't come back''.

"I just laid in my bed and cried and cried,'' she said.

The trial enters its fourth day today.