Preventive detention for day-long rape ordeal

Trevor Eagle abducted a woman from her Napier home. Picture / Hawke's Bay Today

A Napier man has been sentenced to preventive detention for the kidnap and repeated rape of a Hawke's Bay woman in a horrific day-long attack in January.

Trevor Eagle, 31, stood impassively in the dock of the High Court at Napier today as Justice Miller sentenced him to the open-ended spell in prison with a minimum parole period of 10 years.

Eagle had pleaded guilty to 11 charges including rape, abduction, sexual violation and robbery.

The victim, who was hidden by a screen, described to the court in her victim impact report the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of Eagle.

The attack began when the woman was abducted from her home at knifepoint. The crimes, including one each of abduction, rape, indecent assault, and six of sexual violation, were then committed in a remote Hawke's Bay forest over the course of more than a day.

The woman eventually made her escape, hiding in the bush until the following morning.

Barely clad, she then walked 3km until she was rescued by Rotorua logging truck driver Doug Broughton.

Eagle was arrested two days later between Whakatane and Opotiki following a tip-off from a member of the public who saw the woman's stolen car.

The brutal abduction and rape of the woman was a living testimony to the dangers of the drug 'P', police and the attacker's lawyer said after a previous hearing.

There were cries in court when details of the attack were read out in January.

Defence lawyer Derek Quilliam said then that Eagle "has a lack of memory of any of it but he knows he was involved and has accepted that".

He said: "His remorse and shame has attained an appropriate level. He's a living, walking example of the dangers of P."

Preventive detention means only the Attorney General can release him from prison.

- NZPA, HERALD STAFF