“That would bring [down] the whole foundation of what I was trying to achieve,” he said.
“If I’m doing it then what would stop patrons or other staff from doing it?
“I refute that.”
Burchell also denied he locked a manager in staff accommodation and sexually assaulted her in 2017, but said his relationship with her had been difficult prior to the alleged incident as he had recently put her on a performance management plan.
“She wasn’t happy about it … [she was] disgruntled,” he said.
Burchell told the court he was never informed about either woman’s complaints to police and also denied an allegation from a former worker that he had pulled down her top at the hotel’s wet T-shirt contest in 2020.
“That’s outrageous because there were people around, and they would think I was stark raving mad,” he said.
The Roebuck Bay Hotel runs a regular wet T-shirt competition.Credit: Hannah Murphy
Huggins questioned this characterisation, and said given the nature of the wet T-shirt contest it was difficult to understand why his alleged actions would be seen as “mad”.
Burchell also told the court a claim he raped a backpacker who worked as a bar worker at the pub was also false, and said a relationship developed between the two.
“It was flirtatious … she would make comments like ‘you smell nice, you look good today’,” he said.
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Huggins asked him whether he took the comments as suggestive, but Burchell disagreed.
Huggins also asked whether Burchell had written a letter for a backpacker, indicating she did maintenance and gardening around the hotel, despite only ever doing bar work, which Burchell agreed he did.
But he denied the pair took cocaine together in the venue’s toilets on the night of alleged rape, before they went to her home where she “poured me the strongest rum and coke I’ve ever had in my life”.
He said the pair had consensual sex, and claimed they slept together again 24 hours later.
Burchell also denied claims made by two security guards of inappropriate touching, including an allegation he groped one woman at Broome racecourse’s Ladies’ Day event.
“The suggestion is absurd, there’s six to eight hundred people there – it just didn’t happen,” he said.
Also on Monday, the court was told WA Police had records of complaints made against Burchell dating back six years before they began their formal investigation.
Detective Emma Goodall started the investigation into Burchell, and gave evidence that when she began digging she found a number of statements dating as far back as 2017 about Burchell’s alleged behaviour.
Goodall told the court it wasn’t until a security guard made a formal complaint to the police in 2023 that a formal investigation began.
She said detectives raided the pub in March of that year, seized CCTV from 46 cameras around the venue and warned Burchell he was under investigation by police.
Goodall emailed former and current Roebuck Bay Hotel employees about the investigation, aiming to encourage others to come forward or receive support from police.
Detective Constable Ben Lucas took over the case four months later after Goodall went on leave, and told the court on Monday he began trying to locate witnesses in each of the allegations, but was unsuccessful.
Lucas said it was also difficult to view all the CCTV from the venue’s 46 cameras.
“It’s years and years of footage – if every camera held three months of footage, [multiplied by] 46, that’s about 11 years of footage retained on the hard drive,” he said.
The trial continues.
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