A court-martial has begun in Auckland for a female sailor accused of having inappropriately groped three fellow service members, including a superior officer.

Able Steward Roselia Daniella Epati stood at attention in her dress whites before Judge Maree MacKenzie at Devonport Naval Base this morning as she pleaded not guilty to three counts of indecent assault.

Sub-lieutenant Ben Ruback told a panel of three officers during his opening statement that two women and a man were targeted aboard the HMNZS Canterbury on the night of February 18, 2021, and early the next morning as the ship was docked at Lyttleton.

Epati had already been drinking, he said, when she grabbed a female shipmate’s buttocks as the defendant left the ship for shore leave. Two others were allegedly assaulted hours later as she returned from shore leave.

Testifying via audio-video feed, Epati’s first accuser said she had finished work sometime between 8 and 10pm that evening and was minding her own business when she heard Epati approaching with a large group of other sailors.

“She was happy. She was obviously under the influence — between tipsy and drunk,” the witness said, explaining that she could smell alcohol on the accused.

Moments later, she said, someone touched her buttocks for “a good couple of seconds” and when she turned around Epati was there, laughing.

“She was in a good mood. She was being maybe flirty or funny or whatever,” the woman said.

Epati then extended her hand towards the witness’ genital area, the witness said, explaining that she stepped back to avoid contact.

“You need to go,” she recalled telling Epati, explaining that she went to bed shortly thereafter and didn’t initially tell anybody about the incident.

“I didn’t really want to make anything of it,” she said, explaining that she mentioned it to Epati two days later after there was “talk going around the ship” of other people Epati had touched that night.

“Yeah, you did it to me as well,” she recalled telling the defendant.

“I remember her being embarrassed and she did apologise.”

When Epati returned to the ship around 1am, she was stumbling, yelling, slurring her words and “quite drunk”, recalled her next accuser, who testified in person today.

She had been spurning help from fellow shipmates when she said, “I’ve got balls, like these,” reached towards his crotch and grabbed “quite forcefully”, he said.

“I wasn’t physically hurt ... but I was quite shocked,” he testified, adding that he told her repeatedly she needed to go to bed as she attempted to apologise. “It was very deliberate ... It was very, very clear it was not accidental.”

He woke up a higher-ranking officer to report what happened.

A short time later, the defendant is alleged to have seen another shipmate in the mess hall and tried to explain what had just happened.

“She didn’t say what she did to him. She just said she was in trouble, she’d made a mistake,” the woman said.

“I was quite confused, so I was asking what she meant by it. That’s when she used me to demonstrate what she had done. She just reached forward and grabbed my vaginal area.”

A fourth and final prosecution witness said the third accuser told him about the alleged inappropriate just minutes after it happened.

During cross-examination of the accusers, defence lawyer Matthew Hague questioned their interpretation and memories of what occurred. He pointed out that the first accuser didn’t actually see who touched her buttocks. The groping of the second accuser could have been a drunken accident, he said, reminding the witness that his client had been stumbling. And the third accuser had an axe to grind with the defendant and might have misremembered due to her own intoxication, he suggested.

All three accusers adamantly disagreed.

During his opening statement, Hague noted it was not the job of the witnesses to determine what was on his client’s mind during their interactions.

Epati, he said, “is the only one who can give direct evidence as to what she was thinking”.

The court-martial is expected to continue tomorrow morning, at which point Epati is expected to testify.