Lawyers make their closing arguments in pastor's child-sex trial

Stuff
August 20, 2015

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/71284183/lawyers-make-their-closing-arguments-in-pastors-childsex-trial

Pastor Jone Conikeli was a man of God, who had earned the right to be taken at his word, his lawyer told Wellington District Court on Thursday.

Two girls did not concoct an elaborate set of allegations of sexual abuse about a pastor they knew, the Crown has told a jury.

Prosecutor Ian Murray closed the Crown's case to the Wellington District Court jury on Thursday in the trial of the pastor of the Kingdom Ambassador International Fellowship church Jone Draiva Conikeli.

Murray said it defied belief that an 11-year-old had hatched a plan for revenge on Conikeli for introducing her recently bereaved father to another woman.

Instead the two complainants were supporting each other, he said, finding strength to come forward once they had talked about it.

Murray said Conikeli took opportunities to touch the two complainants in inappropriate ways, while one was sleeping or when visiting the other's home.

Defence lawyer Chris Nicholls said it was a case with cultural, religious and familial aspects that made it difficult to get to the truth.

He said Conikeli was a man of God, a married family man with no convictions, who had earned the right to be taken at his word.

Nicholls alleged the girls had worked together after the younger one became upset with Conikeli.

There could be sympathy for a child who had a mother die and then had to deal with the ordeal of her father abandoning her and going to Fiji to hook up with another woman, but the jury had to be dispassionate.

He said Conikeli had been blamed by the girl for introducing the couple, and she had lashed out.

Conikeli, 42, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of assault with intent to commit sexual violation, two of doing an indecent act on a person under 16 and three of doing an indecent act on a child between January and September last year.  The complainants were aged 11 and 15 at the time.

The judge is to sum up the case on Friday before the jury begins its deliberations.