A Pacific Islander fruit picker has been found guilty of abducting a raping a drunk woman who he found lying unconscious on the nature strip outside her home in Shepparton, Victoria.
Dexley Bule Meme, 29, from Vanuatu, denied charges of rape and “abduction or detention for sexual purposes”, but on Friday a County Court jury found him guilty of both offences.
The trial heard that the victim, 20, was out drinking on August 10 last year when she became intoxicated, and her friends drove her home and knocked on the door just before 11pm, ABC News reported.
The woman’s mother went outside to check on her daughter, who had been placed on the nature strip, and told the court she was unwell and went back and forth between the house and her “unresponsive” daughter for about 20 minutes, only to come out again after going to the bathroom to find her gone.
The mother testified she thought her daughter must have gone out again with her friends, and went to bed.
Prosecutors told the trial that Bule Meme drove past at about 11.30pm, saw the woman lying on the ground, put her in his car and drove the her several kilometres to Poplar Avenue where he raped her.
His car then failed to restart and he walked off, leaving his victim behind. She was found by emergency services in an extreme state of distress at 1am, and told nurses at Goulburn Valley Health she had been raped.
Bule Meme later told police that he stopped to help the woman when he saw her lying on the road, but denied having sex with her.
The court heard from two witnesses, Arthur Petrovski who heard a car pull up near his Poplar Avenue home and a “female voice screaming and yelling”, and Bonnie Gooiker, who saw the victim in distress on the same road, and called emergency services with the help of a passing taxi driver.
“She was very young, very dazed, would scream and then go very silent, and then scream again, she was rocking back and forth,” she said.
“One thing that really stood out to me is that she had no shoes on and her jeans were unbuttoned.”
Bule Meme will return to court on November 25.
Header image: Poplar Avenue in Shepparton (Google Maps).
