Source: Radio New Zealand
The hearing is at Devonport Navy Base in Auckland. RNZ
A panel of three senior military officers have retired to deliberate on the verdict for a senior navy officer accused of encouraging a junior officer to kiss them on the cheek at a bar during an overseas operation.
The senior officer pleaded not guilty to a charge of doing an act likely to prejudice service discipline, which is an offence punishable by up to two years in prison.
Under the Armed Forces Discipline Act, this includes any act likely to bring discredit on the service of the Armed Forces.
The military hearing has been sitting at the Devonport Naval Base in Auckland this week.
Judge William Hastings declined an application for interim name suppression from the accused, but their name is still suppressed pending an appeal.
On Monday, a former junior officer gave evidence on the alleged interaction during an operation in Fiji in March 2023, when officers were given leave for a few days and were drinking at a bar in town.
He said the senior officer first caught the attention of him and another junior officer when they tapped on a glass pane and gestured for a kiss through the other side of the glass, and later gestured for them to come inside the bar and tapped on their cheeks to gesture for a kiss.
The officer said he obliged and kissed them on the cheek, as he felt it was expected.
He conceded during cross-examination by the accused’s lawyer that he “downplayed” the interaction and didn’t tell the whole truth when first approached by the military police in August 2024, as he didn’t think he’d be taken seriously and that he was worried his career would be affected if he spoke up.
The accused senior officer also gave evidence and said they did not encourage the junior officer to kiss them.
Under questioning by their own lawyer, they told the court the interaction didn’t happen, and if it did, it wouldn’t have seemed out of ordinary for an officer to kiss them as “people kiss me on the cheek every day”.
Another navy officer, who said they were with the accused senior officer during the majority of the evening of the alleged interaction, said they didn’t see the senior officer interacting with the junior officer that night.
Judge Hastings told the military panel during his summing up of the case on Tuesday, that they need to be sure on whether the crown has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the senior officer encouraged the junior officer to kiss them, and if so, did they intend to encourage him, did they know they were acting improperly, and was the conduct in the circumstances likely to prejudice service discipline.
Judge Hastings said the answer would need to be yes to all the questions for a member to return a guilty verdict.
In a court martial, all three members of a military panel must agree unanimously on a verdict.
More to come…
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand