Girl tells of being knifed

A 15-year-old schoolgirl raped, stabbed, and left for dead in a reserve behind her home gave evidence yesterday against her alleged teenage attacker.

The Vietnamese girl was attacked while she slept in her Manurewa home early on December 31, 2004. Aged 14 at the time, she was stabbed 10 times and raped before being thrown over the back fence of her property.

She spent a week in hospital after the attack and a bite on her thigh was so severe the mark is still visible 16 months later.

David Mamea, aged 18, pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary but denied a charge of rape on the first day of a trial in the High Court at Auckland.

He is charged with attempted murder, rape, and being party to rape.

Police found Mamea when they searched his home in relation to a stolen car and found the girl's mother's handbag which had been stolen months earlier, before the alleged attack.

Mamea says he was forced to the victim's home at gunpoint by three men and forced to stab the girl once, but never raped her.

Crown prosecutor Steven Haszard said this explanation was beyond belief. The semen of another man was found at the scene but police had been unable to link it to an offender.

Mr Haszard said Mamea had been "narrowly unsuccessful" in killing the victim. The knife just missed her carotid artery and punctured her liver.

Yesterday a screen in the courtroom protected her from seeing her alleged attacker, as she described what happened through a Vietnamese interpreter.

She had gone to bed at 9pm on December 30, 2004, and woke to a touch on her shoulder and a man standing beside her bed.

"I yelled at him and asked him 'who are you?' in English."

The man put his hand over her mouth and pushed her on to her stomach. She struggled and screamed for her sister and felt a pain in her back.

"I saw the knife and I tried to get the knife to put it in between the mattress and the bedhead.

"My God, I can't, I tried to struggle to get him off me, I tried to yell my sister's name."

Forensic evidence recovered from the scene included what police say is Mamea's handprint in blood on the sheets, saliva, and blood.

The victim recalled biting Mamea on the hand during the struggle, believed to have lasted an hour.

She passed out and woke to find herself being carried outside on the man's shoulders. She was quiet, and Mr Haszard claimed Mamea thought he was carrying a body.

Dumped initially by the fence, the girl was picked up and dropped over the fence.

She recalled for Mamea's lawyer, Mary Tuilotolava, the Nike symbol on the soles of the man's shoes as he ran away.

Lying in the reserve, she heard her parents return home and she called to her mother.

"My mother came to me very quickly" and her father jumped over the fence.

The five-day trial continues today before Justice Graham Lang.