Cop on trial over ‘fake rape report’
A Victorian policewoman is facing court charged with making a false report after she claimed a colleague had raped her.
Prosecutor Bob Johnson told the jury that Natalie Passalick concocted a story about rape after her husband found out about her affair with her colleague, Fairfax media reports.
According to the prosecution, the 29-year-old was in a relationship with colleague Heath Merry from December 2008 to April 2009. Ms Passalich, however, alleges their relationship occurred in 2007 and that she broke it off after meeting her current husband.
The court heard how Ms Passalick complained to her boss at Ballarat Communications Centre that she had been raped but didn’t divulge who she was accusing.
According to Prosecutor Bob Johnson, she made up the rape because she had been confronted by her husband over a series of emails between her and Mr Merry.
However Defence counsel Geoffrey Steward said the complaint was true and that the internal police investigation "amounted to a collection of pre-judgmental dinosaurs thinking that a victim of sexual misconduct must act or not act in a particular way".
In her complaint, she said Mr Merry came to her Yarraville house while she was on secondment in January 2009 and penetrated her against her will.
The defence is trying to convince the jury that Mr Merry is a “self-serving evasive, manipulative, adulterous liar".
The trial continues today.
