A man who raped his sleeping partner claims he had no idea he was committing a crime because he came from a country where the predominant attitude disregarded a woman’s right to consent. 

The 30-year-old was sentenced today in the Nelson District Court to five years and nine months in prison on a lead charge of rape, plus other charges including kidnap. 

He came to New Zealand on a working holiday from Malaysia in March 2020, met the woman with whom he had a brief relationship and was found guilty after a trial last October. 

At his sentencing today, the court rejected his claims as being culturally based. 

“He didn’t see himself in the role of a rapist,” the man’s lawyer Lee Lee Heah said but conceded that emotional harm had occurred. 

Name suppression for the man lapsed at the time of the verdict but NZME is unable to name him as it would identify his partner who has automatic name suppression. 

Judge Jo Rielly said today she hoped the young woman, who appeared in court today via video link, could now move on with her life after a difficult process, including that she had been required to give evidence at trial. 

The man found guilty of rape was sentenced today in the Nelson District Court. Photo / Tracy Neal 

The man had been in custody for just over a year awaiting trial on the charges that stemmed from a series of incidents dating back to July 2021, and after he twice breached a protection order by contacting her when he was on bail. 

He was remanded back in custody until sentencing on the rape and kidnap charges, plus other charges which arose within the context of the offending and for which he had already been convicted after earlier pleading guilty. 

They included dishonestly accessing a computer system, attempting to pervert the course of justice and twice breaching a protection order. 

The Crown succeeded in proving the woman did not consent to having sex when they were together on the morning of July 1, 2021, which led to the charge of rape, and that on a later road trip, she had been detained in a car against her will, leading to the charge of kidnapping. 

The defence focused on the man’s view that the woman consented to sexual activity within the relationship they had at the time, and that he neither detained her nor intended for her to be confined. 

Heah said the man arrived from Malaysia in March 2020 on a working visa. In April of the following year, he met and then “fell in love” with the complainant. 

The woman had come to New Zealand from China and was in temporary, casual employment when they met while living in shared accommodation on a North Island orchard. 

By mid-2021 the pair were living in the Tasman region having moved from the North Island for seasonal work. 

The rape occurred on the morning the woman was due to go to a job interview in Nelson. The man said he had taken the day off work to drive her there, but she was still “sleepy” so he woke her “in a romantic way”. 

The woman said she had not consented to the sex and tried to push him away. 

Afterwards, the man moved away while the woman remained in the Nelson region, where she met someone else but remained in contact with the defendant. 

She agreed to his invitation to travel to the North Island to see him for his birthday. In November 2021, while on a Cook Strait ferry crossing from Wellington to Picton, he gained access to her phone as she slept and found evidence of what was described as her affair with someone else. 

It led to the charge of dishonestly accessing a computer system. 

The couple then drove to Kaikōura but argued about what the man had found on her phone. 

The next day a planned whale-watching trip was cancelled due to weather, so the man began to drive south towards Christchurch when the woman told him she had wanted to return to Nelson. 

He was about 10km down the road when the woman realised where they were headed, began yelling and called the police from the car. 

The man then turned around and was pulled over by the police who had tracked the vehicle from the woman’s cellphone signal. 

The Crown argued it was intentional after the man determined that the woman couldn’t be with the other man. 

The defence argued it had been a spur-of-the-moment, irrational, impulsive move governed by his emotions at the time. 

Months later the woman complained to the police about what had happened and the man was issued with a temporary protection order that included conditions that he not contact the woman. 

He later pleaded guilty to two charges of breaching a protection order and attempting to pervert the course of justice by contacting the woman and asking her to withdraw her complaint. 

He was then charged with the more serious offences following police inquiries. 

Judge Rielly began today’s sentencing at a term of seven years and three months in prison, reduced to five years and nine months after credits that included a small discount that recognised that serving a prison sentence in a foreign country with no family support was disproportionately severe. 

She said while it was her view the offending had occurred because of the man’s desire to control the woman as he saw fit, and not as a result of his cultural background, he was nonetheless an intelligent, capable man with good prospects upon his return to Malaysia after release from prison, at a time to be determined by the Parole Board. 

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.