'Danger to the community' rapist jailed

Jordan Marsh is sentenced in the Rotorua High Court this morning. Photo/Ben Fraser

A Bay of Plenty man has been jailed for more than 13 years for a raft of sexual offences against four young women.

That included Jordan Terrance Marsh choking and raping one victim and sexually violating another as well as trying to force-feed the second victim anti-psychotic pills after she tried to fend him off.

Marsh, 21, was sentenced in Rotorua High Court today, after being found guilty of a raft of charges following a jury trial.

That is, one count each of indecent assault, sexual violation by rape, kidnapping, attempted aggravated injury by attempted stupefaction, three counts of threatening to kill and two counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.

Those charges related to offending against three of the four victims.

Marsh earlier pleaded guilty to a further count of unlawful sexual conduct with a young person aged under 16 years prior to the start of his trial relating to the fourth victim.

The offences were committed between 2014 and 2015, and involved victims all aged under 18 at the time of Marsh's offending.

Justice Raynor Asher sentenced Marsh to 13-and-half years prison and told him that he must serve at least half his sentence before he would be eligible to apply for parole.

Justice Asher said a term of non-parole was warranted given the scale of Marsh's offending and agiven that at this point in time he could only be seen as a "danger to the community" .

The non-parole period was also intended to deter Marsh and others from committing this sort of offending, he said.