Eight women living in a Wellington flat had the same man break in night after night. The man was sentenced today in Wellington to nearly six years in jail. Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
A houseful of Wellington university students were terrorised as a man broke in night after night, raping one woman, and standing over the beds of others while they slept.
For a week last year, 21-year-old Te Karawene Atutolu crept around Aro Valley and central Wellington, breaking into houses. Then he attacked a woman in her Abel Smith St house.
The next night he went back and broke back in to watch the woman sleep, but she had locked herself in a room in the house along with a flatmate.
Atutolu then went to another floor in the same house and the victim there woke to find him standing by her bed.
It was only by chance that on the following night he was spotted trying to get back into the same house with a ladder and ran off.
The victim who was raped said: "I think one of the most difficult parts was having to tell my mum and dad that I was raped after a night out after a friend's 21st birthday. They looked so heartbroken and helpless."
The next night, the second victim woke to find him standing over her bed. She watched him in terror until he left and she began frantically calling and texting her flatmates, saying: "There is a man in our house, please wake up."
Another flatmate said she couldn't explain how it felt to get a call from a flatmate to say, "You need to go upstairs, the police are coming, he came back."
The group had to sleep in a backpackers' hostel, on friends' couches or where ever they could as they did not feel safe returning to the house even after changing locks and installing security cameras.
As one said in her victim impact statement, Atutolu had taken their home from them.
He had pleaded guilty to 11 charges including rape, attempted unlawful sexual connection, burglary, fraudulently using a document and possession of a drug pipe.
On Friday Wellington District Court judge Peter Hobbs jailed Atutolu for five years and nine months in jail.
He said Atutolu had previous convictions for burglary and was considered a high risk of reoffending.
Atutolu's lawyer, Marty Robinson, said he felt ashamed and knew he had left the victims living in fear. He had come from a violent background disassociated from his culture and become part of the Cripps youth gang.