Two Wellington brothel keepers "broke in" a 14-year-old girl, kept her high on drugs and put her to work in their central city escort agency, a court has been told.
The trial of Gary John Duffin and Sharyn Hills continued in the High Court at Wellington today, with cross-examination of the complainant's account of how the couple drugged and sexually violated her in 1991.
In 1989, Duffin's daughter Karla Cardno was kidnapped, raped and tortured, before her killer Paul Dally beat her on the head with a piece of driftwood then buried her alive at a beach near Wellington.
The complainant said Hills told her to wear her school uniform when she came to work and bring clients to climax quickly, so they were finished before their hour was up.
"Four men in one day - four big, grown men," she said, breaking into tears on the witness stand.
She said she kept coming back to see the couple at their Mt Victoria brothel "because I was scared. I also felt sorry for them because they had lost their daughter. But the cannabis was the main reason I kept coming back".
She said she worked for Hills and Duffin for up to two years, usually receiving $20 to $40 and marijuana for having sex with up to four men in a shift.
"After my third or fourth visit, they told me I was an escort. I didn't know what paedophiles were. I didn't know what prostitutes were," she told the court.
The couple are charged with 10 counts of supplying three minors with cannabis -- the girl, her friend and her friend's brother .
The complainant, now 32, lives in Australia. She was a Hutt Valley schoolgirl when she became a prostitute.
The second time the complainant met Duffin and Hills, they went to an inner-city hotel, where the couple fed her and her friend Valium and gave them cannabis.
After her friend was asleep, the couple together sexually violated and raped her, she told the court.
"Now I look back I think it was some sort of grooming -- so they could break me in. I call it `my interview'."
Duffin faces an additional charge of sexual violation for a later incident at his brothel, when he touched and simulated sex with the girl before leaving her with a client and a prostitute -- after the man wanted a "double", or two-girl special.
Duffin's lawyer, Greg King put it to the complainant that she had made up the rape to get back at Duffin and Hills for introducing her to the lifestyle.
"You have grossly exaggerated your level of intoxication - you had very little cannabis and Valium, and you were not affected at all.
"You initiated the sexual contact because you wanted money. On two separate occasions you had sex with Gary and on each occasion you were given money for it," he said.
Hills' lawyer, Rennie Gould, likewise questioned whether the girl was raped.
"Do you accept it sounds very hard for other people to understand why you would go back into this lions' den?," she asked her.
The trial continues.
NZPA