A teen who accused a police officer of rape was prone to exaggeration and frequent crisis, her friend told a Northern Territory court.
Senior Sergeant Patrick Carson, 39, has pleaded not guilty to raping the woman, then 19, in the Supreme Court, twice in Darwin in 2020.
Prosecutors say the married officer abused his position as a father figure to use an immature young woman he knew from an exercise group.
During Friday’s trial, the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, “tends to exaggerate a lot and … can blow things out of proportion”.
“I remember saying she tends to exaggerate,” a friend of the woman’s said from the witness stand in response to questions from Carson’s attorney, Mary Chalmers.
The witness agreed that the alleged victim had been investigated over an allegation she had made while the couple was in college.
The court heard the witness also joked with the alleged victim, stating that 40 percent of her messages were about a woman in crisis.
“Remember when she was forever in Darwin, sending you messages about things she said had happened to her as a man came out of the bush and tried to grab her?” said Mrs. Chalmers.
“I don’t know if it was exactly 40 percent of the time, but (she) often told me about things that had happened to her,” the witness said.
“There were several times.”
Another witness said he warned Carson about interacting with the alleged victim, saying, “be careful, don’t do anything stupid”.
“I just had a feeling that maybe[the wife]was a little bit in love with him, and I didn’t want him to end up in a situation that would be hard to explain to his wife,” he said in a statement read to the newspaper. Jury. †
Brain tumor claims
The witness said that Carson told him he was helping the woman because she didn’t get along with her parents and was “quite immature and low in self-confidence”.
The same witness also said the woman told him she had a brain tumor and needed surgery “to show up for training the next day as if nothing had happened”.
“Later, she told us it was an untrustworthy nerve that needed to be shocked,” he said.
“She (also) complained to me that she had been stalked and that this person had turned up to follow her and followed her.”
Earlier, the court heard that Carson and the woman developed an intense relationship over several months while training together.
The woman “felt loved and important and special,” and Carson was able to control aspects of her life and end up sexually abusing her, prosecutor Marty Aust said in his opening statement.
It led to the couple being alone in the house Carson shared with his wife and children, where he allegedly raped the woman after the duo massaged each other on his patio.
The second alleged attack occurred about six weeks later on a couch at a mutual friend’s house, where Carson is accused of violently touching the woman and reportedly saying, “Be a good girl and keep quiet.”
The trial continues on Monday.
