A man charged with rape and kidnapping gave a voluntary interview and a sample of his DNA to police, a jury has heard.
An unregistered taxi driver accused of indecent assault, kidnapping, rape and two charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection faces a jury trial this week in the Dunedin District Court.
Yesterday, the jury watched the man’s voluntary police interview which ran for an hour and 40 minutes.
After moving to Dunedin in 2018 with his family, the man said he struggled to find work and resorted to community Facebook pages for gardening and driving jobs.
The man said he mainly worked Friday and Saturday nights and it was not abnormal for passengers to exit his vehicle without paying the informal fare.
Initially he said he did not remember the early morning drive on February 8, 2021.
When Constable Bo Seong Kim prompted his memory, he recounted how the woman was "very drunk" and had been placing her legs on the dashboard.
He said he touched the woman’s legs to move them away from the steering wheel and said "please, please. I’m driving".
Earlier this week the jury watched the woman’s police interview where she disclosed the graphic details of the alleged assault.
"He must have locked the doors while we were driving because I didn’t realise they were locked until I tried to get out."
"I was trying to get him off me and he grabbed me by the throat.
"I was trying to tell him to stop but I couldn’t really breathe."
The woman described how he strangled her and pinned her down with his arm.
"I’m getting a different story from the complainant and from you," Const Bo Kim said.
As the officer in charge ran through the allegations the man vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
"No, it never happened."
Throughout the interview the accused spoke of his good character and how he did not do "shameful things".
"I’m concerned about my reputation, about my position."
Anne Stevens KC cross-examined the detective, drawing his attention to the defendant’s voluntary DNA sample.
Two scientists from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research earlier testified there was no semen found on the woman’s clothing.
The man’s DNA was found on her underwear but the scientists could not rule out that it belonged to the defendant’s father or son without testing their DNA.
The defence case is that the man’s DNA was transferred to the woman’s underwear simply by the woman sitting in the car — and that the genetic material was not definitively that of the defendant.
When asked to draw a conclusion on the biological evidence tested, the lead scientist was unable to give an absolute answer: "I couldn’t put a probability on either scenario; either scenario is equally likely given the number of possible variables".
The defence case begins today with the defendant expected to give evidence.
