Ex-gang member cleared of rape

Former Mongrel Mob member John Wharemako Gillies has been acquitted of raping a woman in Hawkes Bay last year, but will remain in jail serving a seven-year term for drug offences and assaulting police.

Gillies, 34, gave a softly-spoken word of thanks at the High Court in Wellington on Monday before he was taken back to the cells.

Gillies became notorious in 1993 when he stabbed Gisborne police officer Nigel Hendrikse, partly paralysing him.

In recent years the Mongrel Mob emblem tattooed on one of Gillies' cheeks has been substantially faded with 15 laser treatments.

He was living in Wellington and still on parole at the time he was arrested in Hawkes Bay, his home area, last year for having cocaine and methamphetamine for supply.

Gillies was jailed for seven years in June on the drugs charges and for assaulting two Hastings police officers after a high-speed chase.

The rape trial was moved to Wellington because it was thought he would not get a fair trial in Hawkes Bay.

A 28-year-old woman said she was held down and raped in the back-room of a Mongrel Mob-controlled Napier bar.

The woman said she had only partial memories of the hours that followed.

She had drunk a large amount of alcohol and smoked cannabis, but said her memory loss was unlike anything she had experienced.

She woke up next to Gillies at a Hastings house.

Her description of the rapist varied and under cross-examination she said she was not sure it had been Gillies at the Napier bar.

At the start of the trial prosecutor Russell Collins said it was likely that the woman was drugged, but he did not repeat the allegation in his final address and defence lawyer Tony Snell asked the jury to reject the suggestion as no evidence supported it.

The jury took four hours to find Gillies not guilty of two rape charges, and one each of unlawful sexual connection and abduction.

Gillies gave evidence denying being at the Napier bar or driving the woman to Hastings. He said he met her at the Hastings Mongrel Mob pad.

They left together and she was a willing sexual partner but he denied having sexual connection with her in the way alleged.

- NZPA