Auckland serial rapist Malcolm Rewa appeals sentence for 1988 Onehunga attack
One of New Zealand’s most infamous serial rapists is arguing that his latest sentence, handed down in the High Court at Auckland earlier this year, should be drastically reduced because the crime was so similar to others he’s already been punished for.
Lawyers for Malcolm Rewa returned to the High Court today, but this time for a hearing before a visiting three-judge Court of Appeal panel.
Rewa, 73, watched via an audio-video feed from prison – occasionally nodding off during the hour-and-a-half discussion of legal technicalities that comprised what his lawyer acknowledged was an “unusually difficult” sentencing and appeal given his client’s offending history.
The hearing comes six months after Rewa – who was already serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder and rape of Susan Burdett and preventive detention for numerous other rapes – was given an additional 10-year sentence for what prosecutors described as the “depraved” 1988 attack and rape of a 16-year-old.
The teen had wandered away from an Onehunga birthday party for some fresh air and was sitting on a kerb when Rewa snuck up behind her and threw a rope around her neck. She grasped at the ligature and passed out as he dragged her to the back of a property, where she was bound and gagged as he violated her.
The latest prosecution emerged only after the victim urged authorities to test her decades-old rape kit for DNA and compare it to the national databank, which was created eight years after the attack.
Authorities believe the woman, now in her 50s, was Rewa’s second of 26 known victims. He would later concede that he saw it as a “game” to see how many rapes he could get away with before being caught.
Five trials, one murder
Rewa’s criminal history has been repeatedly thrust into the spotlight over the past three decades through various trials – and for having never intervened when another suspect in the Burdett murder case spent 22 years behind bars despite his innocence.
Teina Pora was released on parole in 2014, and his convictions were overturned by the Privy Council a year later after it was determined he had given a false confession during a 14-hour police interview when he was 17 years old.
Pora was found guilty by two juries, in 1994 and 2000, of fatally bludgeoning Burdett with a softball bat.
Rewa, meanwhile, first went to trial on the charge in 1996.
The first jury was unable to reach a consensus on both the murder charge and an allegation that Rewa raped her. But the panel did find him guilty of most of the 43 charges of sexual offending against the more than two dozen other women.
The Crown tried again with a trial in 1998. Jurors that time found Rewa guilty of raping Burdett but again could not agree on the murder charge. The third and final murder trial took place in 2019, four years after Pora’s murder conviction was quashed. That time, Rewa was found guilty of murder.
He was given a life sentence for the killing, to be served concurrently with his existing 22-year preventive detention sentence for the previous rape convictions.
He appealed against the murder conviction, trying to take the case to the Supreme Court when the Court of Appeal failed to find a miscarriage of justice. The Supreme Court declined to hear the matter in 2024.
‘Excessive, disproportionate’
Rewa faced a sentence of up to 14 years’ imprisonment for the single additional rape charge earlier this year.
Justice Simon Mount ordered a 10-year starting point, then allowed a 25% reduction for Rewa’s guilty plea that was then cancelled out by a 25% uplift for his history of predatory sexual behaviour before and after the teen’s rape.
While the end sentence was 10 years, that figure had little meaning considering Rewa’s already imposed life sentence and preventive detention. More significantly, the judge noted, it would push back Rewa’s parole eligibility by two-and-a-half years: from February next year to August 2029.
“There is no guarantee that you will ever get parole, and there is nothing I’ve seen that should give you any optimism in that regard,” Justice Mount told the defendant at the time.
“That will be a real consequence for you, but it is justified and required.”
But defence lawyer David Allan disagreed.
He noted to the Court of Appeal today that Rewa had received a 22-year minimum period of imprisonment imposed in 1998 for the other rapes, which had similar modus operandi and were in the same time period. Increasing the overall minimum non-parole period to 24-and-a-half years was “manifestly excessive and a disproportionate punishment” when considering totality, he argued.
A substitute sentence of 18 months would not impact Rewa’s parole eligibility date, he suggested. The Court of Appeal justices noted that a sentence of 30 months would have the same effect because of the way parole eligibility is calculated differently for sentences below and over two years.
Justice Paul Radich asked the defence counsel if the principles of accountability and denouncement would be adequately met “by effectively folding this into something that already exists”.
Allan argued that accountability and denouncement were already engaged “at a high level” by the previous sentences Rewa received. A lesser sentence would not amount to minimising Rewa’s offending, and it is in no way intended to diminish the obvious impact his crime had on the victim, he said.
Rewa should not be blamed, he argued, for law enforcement’s shortcomings in not having filed charges earlier due to lack of DNA testing. His client, he noted, had a right to remain silent.
And it’s unlikely one more of the already numerous victims would have caused the minimum period to be increased had he been sentenced for all of the charges at once in 1998, he argued.
In her brief submissions to the appellate panel, Crown prosecutor Zannah Johnston emphasised that it’s important to recognise the impact on the victim. It “doesn’t accord with the principles of sentencing”, she said, for a decades-tardy admission of guilt to be treated the same as had “he told police about it back in the 90s”.
“The fact the offending has come to light later does warrant separate recognition,” she argued.
Appellate Justices David Johnstone, Radich and Grant Powell reserved their decision.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.