More than 25 years after the alleged crimes took place, a former New South Wales police officer has gone on trial, charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and official misconduct against a 17-year-old girl at a rural border police station, a popular tourist region straddling the NSW-Victoria line.
Fifty-six-year-old David Robert Blackbourne, who was 28 and an on-duty serving NSW Police constable at the time of the alleged offenses, has entered not guilty pleas to all five charges against him: two counts of indecent assault, two counts of non-consensual sexual intercourse, and one count of misconduct while holding public office.
Prosecutors laid out their opening case to the jury at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court this week, laying out a timeline of alleged interactions that stretch back to late 1998. The court was told the accused and the teen complainant—who cannot be named publicly due to legal protections for sexual assault survivors—first crossed paths on multiple occasions when Blackbourne was working on an unrelated case, with the teen only knowing him by the first name “Dave”.
Per the Crown’s account, the first recorded contact between the pair came when Blackbourne and an unidentified second officer offered the teenager and her friend a ride home as the pair walked through the town. The officers told the girls they would need to detour to the local police station first before dropping them off. Once at the station, prosecutors say Blackbourne and his colleague gave the teens drinks from a stash of alcohol police had previously seized from another incident, before giving them a tour of the station’s holding cells and eventually driving them to their destination.
A few months after that interaction, the Crown alleges Blackbourne picked the recently 17-year-old complainant up from a local public house in his marked police patrol vehicle. Prosecutors say he then handcuffed both of her wrists and forced non-consensual kissing on her. A separate alleged incident that same October saw the teen attend the police station to borrow a police hat for a costume event, in a pre-arranged meeting with Blackbourne. It was here that the most severe allegations arose: while in uniform, Blackbourne allegedly told the teen she could not leave yet, again forced non-consensual kissing, before committing non-consensual sexual intercourse.
The case remained unreported to NSW Police for nearly two decades: the alleged survivor first brought forward her account to Victoria Police in 2016, and NSW Police only launched a formal investigation into the claims in November 2021. Blackbourne was arrested and formally charged in 2023, with his trial scheduled to run for five court days.
In the defense’s opening address to the jury, senior barrister Matthew Johnston forcefully rejected all allegations against his client. Johnston confirmed the defense does not dispute that Blackbourne was a serving officer at the time of the alleged events, but denies every claim of sexual misconduct, non-consensual contact, and abuse of office. The defense has highlighted the significant passage of time since the alleged events as a core challenge to the prosecution’s case, arguing that the reliability and accuracy of the complainant’s memory must be scrutinized closely by the jury. Johnston questioned whether the complainant’s current account reflects genuine independent recollections of the 1998 events, or whether the narrative has been shaped by conversations with law enforcement in the years after the incident, including a 2020 phone call with investigating officers.
Presiding Judge Huw Baker SC reminded the jury of their legal obligations at the opening of the trial, noting that the burden of proof rests entirely with the Crown, which must prove every allegation beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial is ongoing as of Monday’s opening.