PETALING JAYA: A Malaysian man has been sentenced to five years and nine months in jail after he was found guilty of raping his sleeping partner as well as kidnapping her during a road trip in New Zealand.
The 30-year-old man, whose name has been withheld to protect the victim’s rights, arrived in New Zealand in March 2020.
He has been in custody for over a year awaiting trial on the charges that stemmed from a series of incidents dating back to July 2021, and after he breached a protection order twice by contacting the victim when he was on bail.
According to The New Zealand Herald, the court found 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 on a later road trip, she was detained in a car against her will, leading to the kidnapping charge.
The man’s lawyer, Lee Lee Heah, said the man arrived from Malaysia in March 2020 on a working visa before he met and then “fell in love” with the complainant in April 2021.
By mid-2021, the pair were living in the Tasman region after moving from North Island for seasonal work.
They rented a room in a house where the rape took place on the morning the woman was due to go for a job interview in Nelson.
The man claimed 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 did not consent to having sex with the defendant and tried to push him away.
On other occasions, she did not want to have sex with him but allowed it “out of duty”, reported NZ Herald.
In November 2021, the man booked a cabin on the Cook Strait ferry from Wellington to Picton.
While she slept, he gained access to her phone and found evidence of what was described as her affair with someone else.
After the ferry crossing, the couple drove to Kaikoura but argued about what the man found on her phone.
The next day, a planned whale-watching trip was cancelled due to bad weather. The man began to drive south towards Christchurch but the woman had wanted to return to Nelson.
He was about 10km down the road when the woman realised where they were heading and she began yelling and called the police from the car.
The man then turned around and was pulled over by the police who tracked the vehicle using the woman’s cellphone.
In February 2022, the woman complained to police about what happened and a temporary protection order was issued that included conditions not to contact her.
The man pleaded guilty to two charges of breaching a protection order in September last year and attempting to pervert the course of justice by contacting the woman and asking her to withdraw her complaint.
