Tue, 27 Jul 2021, 10:07AM
A Dunedin 21-year-old allegedly raped two women at the same Orientation Week party, a court has heard.
Samuel Leigh Ebdell is on trial before the High Court at Dunedin after pleading not guilty to three counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and two of rape.
His defence, counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner said, was simple: he did not commit the offences with which he had been charged.
The first complainant told the court she was drinking with friends at a Castle St party, in the city s student sector, on February 17 last year.
In a video interview with police she gave a couple of weeks later, the woman said she bumped into Ebdell, whom she knew through friends, after using the toilet.
He argued no visits to the island should have been permitted while the mountain was at alert level two. In 2020, Wislang took judicial review proceedings against White Island Tours, which was later abandoned, and also against the attorney-general and WorkSafe New Zealand, which was unsuccessful. All three parties were awarded costs. Wislang failed to pay White Island Tours, and it served a bankruptcy notice on him in February. Wislang told the court last month that he found the fees charged by the company’s lawyers to be staggering.
Christel Yardley/Stuff
A public commemoration ceremony has been held, with a minute of silence observed at 2.11pm in Whakatane.
Salvation Army hired rapist who struck again, says review clears them
48-year-old Dwayne Douglas Keats. (Photo / ODT)
Salvation Army hired rapist who struck again, says review clears them Tue, 15 Jun 2021, 10:22AM
A religious charity which knowingly employed a rapist says its oversight did not contribute significantly to the next rape he committed.
Despite being on parole after spending seven years in prison, Dwayne Douglas Keats, 48, got a job as a volunteer van driver in Dunedin for the Salvation Army in late 2016.
Through the job he met his next victim whom he subjected to a torrent of violent and sexual abuse.
A man who beat and stabbed a Dunedin couple to death then set fire to their house has finally admitted the double murder.
Wiremu Paul Namana can finally be