Law team believed rape girl

Law team believed rape girl
By Jennifer Sexton and Natasha RobinsonDecember 3, 2004http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11573511%255E421,00.html
BARRISTER Ian Harrison SC pursued a withering cross examination of an 18-year-old girl who was allegedly gang-raped on a school excursion, even though his own legal team believed the girl was telling the truth.Mr Harrison, the president of both the NSW and the national bar associations and a fervent defender of the legal fraternity, walked a "narrow line" when he presented to the court surveillance taken in the past few weeks of the young woman on nights out in Sydney.
In the court room this week Mr Harrison questioned the young woman about covert pictures taken by the defence's private detective, showing her sitting on a bar stool in a mini-skirt. He questioned her about a condom in her wallet, and he put it to her that she had "overstated the severity of any condition" and "concocted the story that you had been raped".
All the while, the solicitor for Tara Anglican School for Girls, Ric Vass, who was instructing Mr Harrison, believed she was raped. Only yesterday did he make that admission to The Australian.
"I believe she was raped," Mr Vass, a partner at McCabe Terrill Lawyers, who represented the school and the school's insurer, Gerling, said.
Admitting he "had to think twice" about whether to use the video and photos as evidence, Mr Vass said "it is a very narrow line" but denied the defence had suggested the girl's behaviour invited sexual assault.
It was Mr Harrison who gave the green light to use the controversial evidence, and the school did not object, he said.
He said it was used to counter her claim she was too traumatised to socialise normally.
"Why wouldn't you have a look at her on a couple of Friday nights to see whether that is true or not?" he said.
"The object was not to be provocative or to introduce sexuality, but it was to show that she was being a normal girl."
Mr Vass said the defence case centred on the belief the supervision provided by the school was adequate. "We were never going to say she was not raped," he said.
Mr Vass said the defence had an obligation to test her claims.
Mr Harrison is the same man who early last month made a strident defence of Supreme Court Justice Jeff Shaw - exonerating him from having any role in the mystery of disappearing blood samples which followed the judge's car crash in October.
"If it went missing, it could not have had anything to do with the judge," Mr Harrison told ABC radio on November 3. He criticised the media for "dancing around the issue" in a way which suggested Mr Shaw did have a role.
It was later revealed Mr Shaw had in his possession both blood samples, which have registered a blood alcohol four and a half times over the legal limit.
Asked to defend this apparent contradiction, Mr Harrison was last night silent.
"My strict reaction in cases in which I appear is that I will not comment," Mr Harrison said.
The girl, who was 15 when she alleges she was raped by four men on the bonnet of a car in Sorrento during a school trip to Italy, sued the school for negligence, claiming it failed to adequately supervise a tour of Italy and Greece.
The school paid an undisclosed settlement on Thursday.
The girl's father yesterday expressed his dismay that the defence team had put his daughter through such an ordeal while believing she had told the truth about the rape.
"I find it hard to believe that he would admit that now. It's just ridiculous. In your wildest dreams, you would not think that was happening," he said.
Terry O'Gorman, president of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, slammed the use of the footage and photographs in court.
"The school has a duty to ensure that the methods used to run the case are sensitive to the needs of the student," Mr O'Gorman said.
The NSW Rape Crisis Centre said the footage and photographs were designed to undermine her credibility. The Australian