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Offender Databases
Shane Hepi
.
Rape and sexual violation of a girl from when she was 14 between January 2001 and February 2006
Also 49 other including male assaults female (x8) and breaching protection orders (x3)
.
.
none known
Born 1973
Prison
Sentenced to 15 years with a minimum non-parole period of 8 years in August 2009
Appealed this in May 2010 but the appeal was thankfully unsuccessful
Background
Rotorua Daily Post story here
To outsiders they appeared to be a couple, but Shane Douglas Hepi's 16-year-old "partner" lived in fear. The 36-year-old man from Kaingaroa has been sentenced to 15 years' jail with a non-parole period of eight years for sexually violating and raping the teenager he forced to become his partner. At the sentencing in Rotorua District Court on Friday, Judge Chris McGuire said Hepi had been "a law unto himself".
On June 25 he was found guilty by a jury of two counts of sexual violation of a minor between January and September 2001 and three counts of raping the same victim between January 2003 and February 2006, when she was aged between 16 and 19. The teenager and her family were known to Hepi but she cannot be identified for legal reasons. Hepi was arrested after he forced the victim's young brother to kick her in the head and Hepi chased her through a paddock in a van as she ran, naked, carrying a basket of washing.
Days later he took her as his partner and she felt "trapped", the court was told. Judge McGuire said Hepi controlled the girl's family through violence and they all feared him. "You were the alpha male, your word was law. What you said went, and at any stage you were prepared to back it up with violence ... quite frankly, you were a law unto yourself in this household," the judge said. The girl had teeth knocked out by Hepi and often saw "fists flying towards her head" if she didn't do as he asked.
"Towards the end ... to all outward appearances, you were a couple. You appeared to be in a relationship," Judge McGuire said. "It was a complete perversion of reality to say you looked like a normal couple. You ground the psyche of the victim down for so long that she went into survival mode." In submissions to the court, Hepi's lawyer John Bergseng acknowledged "extreme violence" against the victim. His client was remorseful, misunderstanding the relationship between him and the young woman, Mr Bergseng said.
"He has expressed his remorse as best he could, perhaps in a very limited way, which has something to do with the nature of his psyche ... the sad reality is the behaviour was learnt in his childhood and has carried on," he said. Hepi moved around the dock throughout his sentencing. Several times the judge told him to sit down as Crown prosecutor Shane Walsh and Mr Bergseng made their submissions. Mr Bergseng asked that his client receive a sentence which would not "remove all hope from him".
"The impact here has not been as bad as in some cases," he submitted. Mr Walsh told the court Hepi had "little empathy" for his victim, who had lived in constant fear of him. "[She] lived in a climate of fear ... no one will know how she felt inside." He said the community needed to be protected from Hepi. In sentencing Hepi, Judge McGuire noted he had 49 previous convictions.
