NSW: Former basketballer on rape charges

AAP General News (Australia)
08-07-2001
NSW: Former basketballer on rape charges

SYDNEY, Aug 7 AAP - Former national basketball league player Kendal "Tiny" Pinder today
pleaded not guilty to raping a teenager in his apartment last year.

Pinder, who played for the Perth Wildcats and the Illawarra Hawks in the 1990s, denied
in the NSW District Court six charges of sexual intercourse without consent.

The former basketballer is accused of raping an 18-year-old woman at his Kogarah apartment,
in Sydney's south, on September 28 last year.

Prosecutor Nanette Williams told a jury in her opening address the woman had first
noticed Pinder when he blew the horn of his Mercedes Benz at her as she walked along a
footpath on her way to a travel agency.

She said after the woman left the agency, Pinder followed her into a stationery shop
and began a conversation, telling her "there is not a lot of times I see a beautiful black
woman like yourself".

Ms Williams said Pinder insisted the woman get into his car and finally she agreed.

Pinder drove back to his apartment where, after some more conversation, he pushed her
into his bedroom and overpowered her, she said.

Ms Williams said the woman kicked Pinder, struggled and screamed for him to stop and
that she wanted to go home.

"She told him to stop it but he didn't," she said.

"The accused ignored protests and her requests to stop this sexual activity."

Ms Williams said that after intercourse, Pinder pushed the woman into a shower and
then dropped her off at a railway station from where she went to work and told a supervisor
she had been raped.

Pinder's barrister, Stephen Hanley, told the jury the main issue in the case was whether
the intercourse was with consent.

The trial is continuing.

AAP gl/rp/apm/bwl

KEYWORD: PINDER

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