Man fails to have conviction overturned

The man has been jailed for 14 years. Photo: RNZ.

A man jailed for raping, kidnapping, and assaulting a woman who later threw herself from his car has failed to overturn his conviction.

Darryn Michael Horton was jailed for 14 years for violating and raping the woman, who he'd just met, over a weekend in Tokoroa in March 2018.

But he argued his trial wasn't fair because he couldn't use her previous convictions – which include shoplifting and other dishonesty offending – to challenge her creditability as a witness.

The Court of Appeal disagreed, saying in a recently released judgment that that kind of history is a poor indicator of how likely someone is to lie about allegations of serious sexual abuse.

Horton and the woman, who can't be named, met for the first time on the weekend the charges relate to.

At the end of it, she threw herself out of a moving car and said she had been "kidnapped, drugged, and raped".

Horton has said "all their interactions were consensual" - leaving a clear conflict between their evidence of what happened over the weekend, the Court of Appeal judgment said.

Horton was convicted of nine charges after a jury trial in Rotorua in July 2019.

Two charges were of rape, one of abduction for sexual connection, five of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, and one of assault with a weapon.

He had already pleaded guilty to a tenth charge of supplying methamphetamine.

They all stem from a weekend in Tokoroa in March 2018, during which the woman said Horton was constantly watching her.

She'd gone to Horton's home on a Friday, with a mutual friend who left after a while.

Horton, who was holding a firearm, then told the woman to "get in the bedroom", she said.

She described repeated rape, Horton injecting her with methamphetamine and handling knives and firearms in a "menacing" way, the judgment said.

He took her halfway home on Monday but changed his mind and reached for a gun that was sitting in the car, she said.

She threw herself out of the moving car, seen by passing motorists.

In his evidence, Horton claimed the woman asked to stay and got into his bed on the second night.

He had no idea why she threw herself out of the car, he said, and the defence contended she was an unreliable witness.

In the appeal, Horton and his lawyer argued the woman's pattern of past convictions "discloses a habitual propensity for dishonesty on her part".

She had dishonesty convictions - including shoplifting, theft, and theft by a person in a special relationship - spanning a period of 35 years, the judgment said.

But there are multiple examples of courts ruling that information on minor dishonesty offences doesn't help to assess the truthfulness of someone alleging serious sexual abuse, the Crown said.

So, though the woman's history was "fairly extensive and sustained", it wouldn't have substantially helped the jury to decide her truthfulness, the Court of Appeal judgment said.

The appeal was dismissed.

-Waikato Times/Libby Wilson.

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