A police officer crept into a fellow police officer's motel room and sexually assaulted her, a court has heard. 

The 29-year-old accused appeared on Wednesday at Auckland District Court where he is on trial before Judge Evangelos Thomas and a jury. 

The policeman was arrested last March and denies one charge of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and one charge of indecent assault.

​The charges were laid following a complaint from another officer, relating to two incidents which allegedly occurred on February 5 2019 in Kerikeri ahead of Waitangi Day. 

The officer, who has interim name suppression pending an appeal, was stood down following the incident and a separate employment investigation followed.

Crown prosecutor Fiona Culliney told the court the complainant and the defendant were part of a group of officers who were drinking and socialising at their motel the night before the alleged incident happened.

They played drinking games, people were wrestling and the alleged victim and another woman were challenged to drink out of a hollowed out police baton.

The mood was "lively and jovial" and there was laughter and fun, the court heard. 

Later in the evening, the complainant claims she went to grab a beer from one of the motel units and the defendant followed her and shut the door. 

"He tried to 'come on to her'," Culliney said. 

The Crown claims the defendant put his hands down the alleged victim's shorts and sexually assaulted her.

She tried to stop him kissing her and told him repeatedly to stop, the court heard. 

The defendant allegedly told the victim "no-one has to know".

The complainant dismissed his actions as "boys will be boys" behaviour and, not wanting to cause a scene, she assumed that would be the end of it.

But in the early hours of the morning, she was woken by the defendant again sexually assaulting her, the court heard. 

At 2.34am on February 5, the defendant was seen making his way across the courtyard from his room to the alleged victim's room. 

The victim woke up to a painful "forced" feeling, and the defendant telling her to be quiet as he had his arm over the top of her, the jury was told. 

"She sits up and slides up the bed panicking," Culliney said. 

Judge Evangelos Thomas is presiding over the trial.

"She felt her iPhone underneath her and scrolls across to the camera on the phone and she begins to video record it."

A brief part of the recording was played to the jury and the alleged victim, clearly distressed, can be heard saying "you shouldn't have touched me".

"I didn't. I didn't know what to do," the defendant replies.

The victim can be heard crying in the recording and tells the man: "I denied you earlier and I've woken up to you f...... me," the victim says. 

"Simply, he helped himself to the sleeping complainant given his own intoxication and self-entitlement," Culliney said. 

The prosecutor told the court, the defendant started to panic and returned to his motel room where he told his room mate, he and the woman were "hooking up" when she suddenly told him to stop and started crying.

The alleged victim was then spoken to by other officers.

Defence counsel Paul Borich QC made a brief opening statement to the jury, stating any sexual activity between the pair was consensual.

"This was a pre-arranged hook up," Borich QC said. 

He asked the jury to examine the victim's behaviour in footage that would be played to the court.

Borich QC appealed to the jury to use their common sense and claimed the complainant left her door unlocked for a reason. 

"This was not rape, this was regret ... by a complainant worried about the moral consequences of a hook up ... and the way out was to say rape," he said. 

The trial is set down for two weeks with the Crown set to call 26 witnesses, a number of them police officers.