The charges have been dropped, but police believe they had a rape case – against three New Zealand rugby players, reports Carina le Grange
A KwaZulu-Natal police investigator said on New Zealand television last week that he believed justice had not been done in the case involving the alleged rape of a Durban woman by a member of the Hurricanes rugby team.
Captain Vishnu Chetty also made the startling claim that more than one person would have been charged with the rape of a 31-year-old Durban woman in April this year.
Hurricanes player Roger Randle was charged with rape, but DNA test results implicated both him and two other men – both also members of the Hurricanes team. One was named as Potu Leavasa and the other was not identified.
The woman, who may not be named, withdrew rape charges against Randle in May. She approached the daily Holmes programme, one of New Zealand’s top magazine programmes. She appeared on the show but was not paid. After the charges were withdrawn, Randle also appeared on the show – and was paid $20 000 (more than R60 000).
Chetty also appeared on the programme. He had investigated the woman’s complaint and supported her claim that she had been raped.
After the woman withdrew the charges, KwaZulu-Natal police regional superintendent Bala Naidoo was emphatic that ”a rape has occurred”. The province’s attorney-general, Tim McNally, said prosecutors were ready to proceed with a trial. He also said the complainant had withdrawn the charges – but not the allegation that she had been raped.
The dramatic revelation that three sperm counts were found led to a flurry or reports in the New Zealand media last week. In one report, Chetty told The Dominion daily newspaper that police had drawn up three warrants of arrest, and were ready to act on them.
In giving her version of events, the woman told Holmes her meeting with Randle and Leavasa at the Durban night spot TJs was a chance encounter: she had gone there to meet other friends, who did not turn up.
She and the rugby players started talking and spent the evening together, ”having fun like people do when they are out for an evening”.
She was calm and dignified on the programme, meeting the challenging questioning, telling her story, coming across in a manner indicating great control, breaking down to wipe back tears only once. Her blonde hair was tied back somewhat severely, she wore a high-necked black top and smart gold earrings.
When TJs closed in the early hours of the morning, she said, she accompanied the men to their hotel, where they had intended to change into smarter clothes and go on to a more upmarket nightclub.
In response to questions that people might believe she was looking for trouble by going with the men to their hotel room, she said: ”Whether it was a man or a woman, it does not really matter. I don’t think I was looking for trouble at all, I felt safe. I didn’t feel threatened. I thought these were nice people, I could trust them.”
She said she in no way went to the room to have sex – as had been alleged by Randle, who claimed the woman had been to bed with Leavasa in their shared room.
In the room, they were drinking neat rum, she said, from a bottle. ”We sat chatting, Randle talked about his family, showing me a picture of his baby [whose mother he has since married]. I talked about my life, they knew I have children, where I worked …”
When she said she had a headache, Randall gave her two tablets and a glass of water, she claimed. ”And that was the last thing I remember,” the woman said.
She then proceeded, somewhat more passionately, to say she believes she was drugged – ”but I don’t know how, or when”. Challenged on what was called an extraordinary claim, she said she had no idea how this could have happened or if it had been planned. She voluntarily offered the information that blood tests had revealed she had drunk a lot that night, but there was no trace of drugs.
She just lost consciousness – and what she next knew, was that Randle was with her in the room, his face ”just so, here” close to hers, ”right there” – and that was why she accused him of rape by name.
She believed he was the only person involved until the police later carefully prepared her to be told the shocking news that three men were connected to sperm samples obtained in the investigation. When she was told, she said, she collapsed and had to be sedated.
”When I woke up, it felt as though I had never been to sleep. I saw his [Randle’s] face intently, he was right [here], I will never forget that face. He called me a ‘dirty white bitch’. I got up and went to the sliding window, opened it and started screaming for help. ”Leavasa was down at the pool, he just looked up and he just laughed. … And then I knew what position I was in … and why I was there.”
She said it was not true that Randle – as he has claimed – touched her only once that night, when he shook her hand when they met, and that it was also not true that Randle had found her in bed with Leavasa, giggling, when he entered the room after arriving at the hotel independently from them.
The Holmes presenters repeated several times during the programme that it was important to note that Randle had consistently claimed to be innocent of the charges.
Chetty in his turn told the programme that the medical examination of the complainant pointed to rape. ”Her injuries were consistent with rape. She had injuries on her inner thigh, her thighs, her ribs, and she had tears on her vagina. Those injuries usually occur when consent is not given by the victim,” he said.
”From the medical evidence and as a result of the police investigation conducted, I believe a criminal rape occurred,” Chetty said.
The woman said she withdrew the rape charges after consultations with her lawyer, the police and the prosecutor. She believed the prosecutor felt she would not convey a good impression in the witness box.
She kept breaking down during the pre-trial questioning, she was having nightmares and getting professional help on a regular basis but could not come to terms with what had happened to her, specifically due to the fact that three people could have been involved and that she could not remember what had happened. It had ruined her life, she said.
”They thought that I was an unreliable witness due to my mental state, that I would break down and not be able to withstand cross-examination. I felt let down, I was astounded, horrified. I thought, is there no justice?”
She denied any deals had been cut with Randle’s lawyers or that money had been involved.
On the day after the programme was aired, Randle and Leavasa’s manager, John Fitzsimmons, refused to comment, and Leavasa has yet to respond to the allegations.
Randle, however, issued another – the final one, he said – statement in which he again denied the allegations and said he believed the matter was closed, both for him and for the authorities.
He said statements the woman made on the television programme were not consistent with her earlier statements and that information regarding the DNA test results and samples were misleading.
He added that it was ”interesting” to note that the woman had not proceeded with the case because the South African authorities believed she was ”an unreliable witness”.
Randle has netted more than R60 000, plus another undisclosed sum paid to him by a women’s magazine which had exclusive rights to his wedding with the mother of his child.
The complainant was reported by the Holmes programme to be trying to resume her job and her life – despite feeling that it has been shattered by events, one night in April, which she cannot recall.