Three immigrants have been found guilty of gang-raping a German backpacker in a van in Auckland on New Year’s Day last year before dumping her onto the street outside her hostel.
The rapists were found guilty by a High Court jury on Wednesday after a two-and-a-half-week trial, but Justice Mathew Downs continued a name suppression order until sentencing in May in order to give their lawyers time to apply for a permanent order.
This means the trio, who immigrated from the same “war-torn country” in 2021 according to local media, and were on bail until the trial, cannot be legally identified until then, and if a permanent order is granted their names and nationality will never be revealed to the public.
The men, called B, O, and S in court, were each charged with three counts of rape, one for being the main offender and two for aiding or encouraging the others. B and O were convicted of all three counts, but S was only found guilty of the principal charge, The New Zealand Herald reported.
The trial heard the 19-year-old tourist, who has only patchy memories of the night, was heavily intoxicated when she met B on the dancefloor of the Family Bar on Karangahape Road in Central Auckland.
She was then led outside where O and S were waiting for a signal, and the pair then pulled up in a van belonging to a mutual friend, which was opened from the inside.
The men then drove their victim to the empty carpark of an aluminium business in an industrial estate in Avondale where CCTV showed B was already naked and on top of the woman in the middle row of seats, with O looking back from the driver’s seat, when they arrived.
O then walked around the van and “waited his turn” at the middle door before raping the woman seconds after B, and S then climbed onto the woman’s row of seats from the back of the van and raped her also.
The CCTV showed B get back on top of the woman to rape her again, and the court heard the trio watched each other, encouraged each other, and took photos.
The prosecution said the victim was likely unconscious for most of the ordeal, and the court heard she told a police interviewer that at one point she woke up and found herself being raped by a stranger while other men spoke a foreign language she didn’t recognise.
At 4.21am she was pushed out of the van 35 metres from her backpacker accommodation without her underwear, and a sexual assault physician said a proper medical examination was not possible due to the victim’s “grossly swollen” genitalia, which was the worst she had ever seen.