Warning: This article contains distressing content
Teina Takimoana sat next to the 15-year-old and asked if she was alright. He comforted her as she asserted she did not want to have sex with the group of males.
But as Takimoana turned off the light, all hope he may have been there to save her was extinguished. He pushed her onto her back and raped her too.
Takimoana was the third person that evening to rape the girl. Shortly after, his co-offender, Arthur Te Wera, came back into the room, somewhere in Papakura, Auckland, and raped her again.
It was the third time that evening Te Wera had raped her but this time, he ordered the then 18-year-old Takimoana and a third offender, who cannot be named, to film the attack.
Takimoana and the other man laughed as they recorded Te Wera pulling the girl by her hair and pushing her face into the camera while sexually violating her.
But Takimoana's laughter has now come to an end.
In late November, he appeared red-faced and upset as he stood in a dock at Manukau District Court for sentencing on his part of the pack rape.
He had unsuccessfully defended one charge of rape at a trial in August.
Te Wera, who pleaded guilty to his part, was sentenced in March 2024 and the third offender, charged with one count of rape, was earlier dealt with under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act.
At Takimoana's sentencing, he was followed into the courtroom by a large group of family and friends, many of whom were also upset and carrying boxes of tissues.
"The court system is messed up. I went through this hard trial for him to only get six years, what a joke," the now 18-year-old said.
'They have destroyed me'
The teen found it painful to watch footage during the trial of her police interviews and see how "hurt, weak and emotional" she was at the time.
"I turned the volume down on the computer screen and tried to block my ears so hard that it hurt because I couldn't hear myself on videotape. It was so heartbreaking for me."
The victim described Takimoana, Te Wera and their co-offender as "disgusting, horrible human beings".
"They know what they did to me and they have completely destroyed me.
"I hope they pay for what they have done to me. It is sickening and they are evil."
On the evening of 12 July 2022, Te Wera, who knew the victim's mother through a mutual friend, turned up at their Auckland home and asked the teen to show him around their house.
When they got to her bedroom, he sat on her bed, pulled out his genitals and asked her to have sex with him.
She refused and then they went to the lounge where Te Wera asked the victim's mother if he could take the teen to the drag races.
Shortly after, the victim was in the car with Te Wera, travelling to what she thought was a car event.
But instead of going to the races, he took her to a friend's home.
On the way there, he asked if she wanted to have a threesome with him and one of his associates. Again, she refused.
In a shed at the house, Te Wera was drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis when he pulled the victim onto his lap and began to touch her genitals.
She tried to push his hands away and cover herself so Te Wera's associates could not see.
The light was then turned off and he raped the girl.
One of his associates turned on the light and told him to stop. Te Wera and the others laughed at the teen as she pulled her clothing back on.
Te Wera, his associates, including Takimoana, and the victim then left the house and travelled to another address.
Takimoana sat in the back with the victim and grabbed her thigh. She was afraid and looked out the window.
When they arrived at a house belonging to a woman the males called "Aunty", Te Wera took the teen to a bedroom. The room stank of urine and it was strewn with dog faeces and rubbish.
He put her on a bed which was stained and covered in dog hair, and took off her clothes.
Despite her telling him "no" he began raping her. She was in pain, felt powerless, "frozen" and too afraid to resist.
After Te Wera had finished with the victim, another man, the one who cannot be named, came into the room and raped her.
Following this, Takimoana entered and found the teen crying. He briefly comforted her as she told him she did not want to have sex with them, and was being made to feel like a prostitute. But her pleas were ignored.
Takimoana then raped the teen before Te Wera returned and committed the act, again, which his friends filmed.
Eventually, the prolonged ordeal ended when Te Wera instructed: "Let's drop this chick off home".
She was back in the car, sitting next to one of the males who had just raped her.
They pulled up outside her house and she got out and ran inside to her mother, who phoned the police as soon as the teen revealed what had happened.
That night, she underwent a sexual assault forensic examination at the hospital and was given medication to prevent her from contracting any diseases.
Testing revealed Te Wera and Takimoana's DNA was present.
Premeditated, not impulsive
At Takimoana's sentencing, his lawyer Kelly-Ann Stoikoff asked for his youth to be taken into account and pointed out he had not previously been before the courts.
"What happens to him today is going to appear to this young man as a tunnel without light. He will obviously need to adapt himself to his new environment, his family will have to adapt to what will occur today," she said.
"It can only be hoped, Your Honour, that he will come to a place where he won't see this as the end of the world, which a young man is bound to do, Your Honour, and which his partner and his mother will do."
Judge Webby said Takimoana, who sat in the dock facing the wall, seemingly to avoid the media permitted to photograph him, had initially told police he never had sexual contact with the teen, that she was lying and she "belonged to the streets".
However, when the DNA results came back they proved that was not the case.
"You were effectively caught out in that lie."
The judge said that evidence resulted in him changing his story at trial.
"You said the sex you had with her was consensual. Clearly, the jury rejected your account."
While the judge allowed for Takimoana's age, previous clean record, and background factors and noted Te Wera's offending was more serious, he said Takimoana had not shown any remorse and his offending was "premeditated rather than impulsive".
"It is not offending that arose from momentary loss of self-control that can feature in youth offending. You raped her after two others did."
He described the sexual offending against the victim as repeated, prolonged and degrading.
As Takimoana was being taken out of court to begin his jail term, sobbing could be heard from the gallery where his family called out, "Love you, my brother," and, "Stay strong brother".
At Te Wera's earlier sentencing, the court heard how he had expressed shame for his actions but also blamed the teen for his sexual offending.
"It takes two people," Te Wera said from the dock, causing concern for Judge Ngaroma Tahana who rejected that he was remorseful.
In sentencing the now 25-year-old, Judge Tahana referred to a pre-sentence report, which showed the comment made by Te Wera, who has "gang family" tattooed across his head, was consistent with what he had told the report writer.
"You'd said you didn't know how old the victim was and that you thought she was older because of how she dressed and spoke.
"You also said she was interested in a relationship and you were adamant to the report writer that this was consensual.
"That is at odds, Te Wera, with your apology letter where it says you are 'sincerely sorry and disgusted'".
Judge Tahana balanced the harm caused to the victim and her vulnerability, the premeditation, and the scale of the offending, with Te Wera's guilty pleas, his "unfortunate background," and his youth, despite acknowledging he was "not legally a youth".
On one charge of unlawful sexual connection and three counts of rape, he was sentenced to seven years and nine months' imprisonment.
Moving forward
The teen spoke to NZME about her disappointment with the justice system, saying she felt the sentences were too light.
"No wonder girls are too afraid to speak up and try to get justice when there's a court system that does not care about the victims and gives these rapists such little sentences.
"They get provided more help, support and counselling in prison than what I get."
She described herself as once being bubbly and outgoing. Now, she feels stripped of her dignity and self-respect and lives in fear.
"My childhood was taken away."
As the teen tells her story, she gets upset when recalling how she willingly left her home to go with them.
It is a move she struggles to explain. There was an element of feeling she had to go with them, and she was also lonely and angry at the time.
Her mother was there when the teen left with Te Wera and said she had no issue with it at the time.
While the teen acknowledges what happened was no fault of her own, she vehemently regrets getting into the car that day.
"I hate myself for it."
But she has not lost all hope.
The teen is continuing to focus on her own healing. Now she is relocating from Auckland and working towards a new career to help leave "all this" behind.
"That will be the only thing I'm looking forward to now, creating new memories and moving away from this past.
"Though I'll never forget what they did, I'll keep trying."
