Sydney, Austraslia - A TELEVISION network has told a Sydney court it most likely shredded records of a deal it made with a girl who claimed Nowra cult leader William Kamm assaulted her.
Police had been asking the network to hand over the records for the past two years.
A Sydney District Court jury heard yesterday that a lawyer for the Seven Network was unable to find the contract the girl signed in 2002, when she was paid $2500 to give an interview for the Today Tonight program detailing her allegations of sexual interference by Kamm when she was aged 15.
The girl spoke to the television network before taking her complaints to the police.
At the start of his trial last week, Kamm pleaded not guilty to four counts of aggravated indecent assault and one of aggravated sexual intercourse with the girl in 1993, in the months after she had been selected as one of his 12 "mystical wives".
Yesterday, the police officer leading the investigation, child protection and sex crimes squad officer Detective Senior Constable Lorenda Barber, told the jury she had tried to question the television presenter who struck the interview deal with the girl, but he had decided on legal advice not to make a police statement.
Snr Const Barber had repeatedly asked the network to hand over the contract. The network assured her it would retrieve it from the archives, she said.
When Kamm's lawyer Gregory Stanton told her yesterday the network's advice was that the contract was probably shredded when the network moved offices, Sen Const Barber said it was the first she had heard of it.
Mr Stanton told the jury that, as part of the television deal, a male friend of the girl - who had not been part of the community - was paid $5000 by the network for helping set up the interview, bringing to them Kamm's head "on a plate".
Mr Stanton also raised in court yesterday the names of others the girl and her mother had spoken to before deciding to take the girl's complaints to the police.
During cross-examination, the girl's mother agreed that she had been put in contact with Nowra police by disgruntled former members of Kamm's community.
She also agreed with Mr Stanton that since leaving the community in 1998, she had been seeking money from Kamm that she believed he owed her.
The trial will continue next week.