Teacher Not Guilty - Gisborne

Stuff
May 8 2007; 17:59

Teacher found not guilty of sex with underage student
NZPA

Tears welled in the eyes of a relief teacher accused of having sex and indecently assaulting a 14-year-old student as a jury found him not guilty on all charges in Gisborne District Court today.

It took the jury two and a half hours to find Janus Herewini Warmenhoven, 29, not guilty of having sexual intercourse with a girl aged between 12 and 16 and two counts of indecently assaulting a girl aged between 12 and 16.

As the final verdict was read, he wiped a tear off his cheek.

Warmenhoven had name suppression up to and during the trial to protect his right to a fair hearing as he had faced charges in Australia last year.

In April last year a Brisbane Supreme Court jury found Warmenhoven not guilty of murder and manslaughter.

He was accused of killing his former girlfriend's 10-month-old daughter in Brisbane during February 2003.

He appeared in Gisborne District Court this week accused of kissing, indecently touching and having sex with a 14-year-old former student during a party in a rural East Coast town in January 2004.

In closing, defence counsel Nicola Wright told the jury that these things simply did not happen.

Basically the complainant was a young girl, who had a crush on her teacher – a teacher she knew was not returning to the school next year, Mrs Wright said.

The girl made up this story so she could brag about it to her friends.

When the story hit her mother's ears she did not want to look like a liar so she continued the story.

"This is a woman who can't back down from what she said three and a half years ago," Mrs Wright said.

Mrs Wright asked the jury to imagine what the girl's life would have been like in a small East Coast town if she had backed down and admitted that she had lied.

There were two things the complainant was holding on to, that she had sex with Warmenhoven and that she kissed him.

However, there was no witnesses to either of those events, Mrs Wright said.

In closing for the prosecution, Nicola Graham said Warmenhoven was a man who was liked by students; a man many considered quite handsome and that many of the girls had a crush on.

He sometimes socialised with his students out of hours, often at parties around town.

"At one of those parties, less than a month after school year ended, he hooked up with a student," she said.

When people found out, Warmenhoven said it did not happen and that the girl was only boasting to her friends.

However, her friend and cousin had testified that on the night of the party Warmenhoven asked her if the complainant wanted to "hook up" with him.

A short time later she noticed both Warmenhoven and the complainant missing.

Around an hour later when they returned Warmenhoven was wearing different clothes to what he had been wearing earlier in the evening.