Rugby player jailed for sex attack
A representative rugby player and his team-mates taunted and whistled at a woman before he followed her to a secluded area and tried to rape her.
Mid-canterbury player Kolinio Yabia Tamanitoakula, 25, appeared in the Gisborne District Court yesterday and was jailed for almost 31⁄2 years after pleading guilty to assault with intent to commit sexual violation.
The attack on the woman happened in the Gisborne central city about 4am on October 2 last year, the morning after Tamanitoakula’s Ashburton-based team played East Coast in Ruatoria.
Tamanitoakula and his teammates yelled and whistled at the woman as she walked through the city centre on her own.
Tamanitoakula called out to her. She ignored him and kept walking.
He grabbed her and pushed her down some steps into a park where he forced her to the ground and began kissing her.
Despite her protestations he forced his hand down her top then pulled down her trousers.
When Tamanitoakula was distracted by a passing motorist the woman struggled away from him and ran on to the road in front of a car.
She was extremely distressed and covered in wet grass and mud. She told the man driving the car that someone had tried to rape her. The man took her to the Gisborne police station. As she waited outside the station she saw Tamanitoakula and identified him to a member of the public, who chased him but lost him.
A short time later a police dog handler tracked Tamanitoakula from the scene to the apartments where his team was staying.
Surveillance footage showed Tamanitoakula in the central city area after the attack and entering the apartments. A short time later he was found in one of the rooms. His clothing had mud and grass on it.
Tamanitoakula initially told police he had been being a ‘‘nice man’’ and had walked with the woman into the park but she ran away.
Later he admitted taking her pants down but ‘‘she didn’t want it’’ so he got up and walked away.
He told police he been drinking ‘‘heaps’’ on the night.
Tamanitoakula’s lawyer, Leighvi Maynard, urged Judge Warren Cathcart to take account of his client’s previous good character.
He acknowledged the pain Tamanitoakula caused his victim was ‘‘indefensible’’ but his behaviour had been ‘‘utterly out of character for him’’.
He had been ‘‘out with the team and clearly intoxicated’’ and was extremely remorseful, Maynard said.
Tamanitoakula had been supporting his mother in Fiji and now ‘‘his promising rugby career is effectively at an end’’, he said.
He would now be deported back to Fiji, Maynard said.
Judge Cathcart said the victim impact statement showed the incident had a ‘‘devastating effect on the victim’’ who now felt unsafe going out at night. She had to relive the attack every time she passed the scene.
He accepted Tamanitoakula had a previous clean record and that he was a valued member of his church.
But while he had expressed remorse, Tamanitoakula’s presentence report indicated he had little insight into his offending.
‘‘While you may be expressing remorse... it lacks real insight for the offending,’’ Judge Cathcart said.
A cultural report raised no factors that warranted a discount to his sentence, and any suggestion that culture provided some explanation for an assault such as this was ‘‘repugnant’’.
Judge Cathcart said there was a need to deter this sort of conduct before sentencing Tamanitoakula to a prison term of three years, four months and two weeks