Rapist driven by fantasy of love

Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood (right) says the rapist will have to reoffend. Picture / Brett Phibbs

The man who brutally raped a woman in her Pukekohe home is driven by a ritualistic fantasy and will attack again because his plans went awry, a specialist police profiler said yesterday.

Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, officer in charge of the national criminal profiling unit, yesterday compared him to the country's worst serial rapist, Joseph Thompson, who was sentenced in 1995 to 30 years in prison for 129 charges of rape, assault and abduction against 50 women over 12 years.

The unit was established after the Thompson inquiry and is based at the Counties Manukau police district headquarters in Otahuhu.

Mr Henwood said the man who attacked the 37-year-old administration manager a week ago had fantasies of a relationship with his victim.

He handcuffed and threatened the woman with scissors and a hammer to force her to comply with his demands, which included dressing up in different outfits throughout the five-hour ordeal.

Police said the woman was violated and raped in every possible fashion, and the attack included the use of foreign objects.

"He is a person who is driven by a ritualistic fantasy, and a key component of that is that he wants to have a relationship with his victim," Mr Henwood said.

"His fantasy drives him to believe that this relationship is that of a lover, a partner, and he will quite often comment, in general terms, on the comfort and the needs of the victim."

Mr Henwood said the man wanted to finish the relationship on a good note.

"He perceives, his fantasy drives him to believe, that it's going to be a relationship where the victim by the end of it quite likes him, and had the circumstances been different, they would have been quite a good couple. This, of course, is totally ludicrous."

The woman escaped by distracting the man as he drove her to a money machine.

She ran from her vehicle to a nearby petrol station.

"On this occasion it all turned to chaos for the offender, the way it ended," Mr Henwood said.

"This type of offender ... will have to reoffend. He will have to go back again. The only way they stop is if they're caught or something else stops them - they leave town ... but they're going to pop their head up again."

Like Thompson, the man would have watched the woman by "peeping and peering" through windows to gather information about her life and the neighbourhood, Mr Henwood said.

He was also likely to have watched other women, "so that if one target isn't just right on a particular night he can move on to another".

He would enter a home through an unlocked window or door, or "con" his way into the house, as he did by asking to use the telephone and pushing his way inside.

Mr Henwood said the type of rapist he described did not want a confrontation with his victim because that would spoil his fantasy that they would "get on".

The man would have offended in the past but may not have been caught. Prior offences could have included burglary, assault, peeping, being unlawfully on a property or pinching underwear off clothes lines.

"These kinds of guys, if they're out prowling as regularly as we believe they are, they're not going to restrict themselves to one particular target. And when they go out to commit the offence and decide to carry it through, they go to a number of addresses and find one that's the most vulnerable and fits in with the way they want to carry out the offence."

If the rapist had a partner, she may not know what he was capable of doing but police have urged any women who may have information to ring the inquiry team.

Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Grimstone said police had a list of more than 50 suspects nominated by the public, present and former police officers and solicitors.

Staff had visited almost 300 houses and were waiting for results from forensic evidence sent to the ESR.

WANTED MAN

* Police are hunting a Maori man aged in his late 30s or early 40s. He was unshaven and had wrinkles around his eyes.

* The man went to the woman's Dublin St home wearing a green nylon hooded jacket, black baseball cap with white trim, dark pants, a black woollen scarf and black woollen gloves.

* He left wearing a pair of her "Blue Denim Company" jeans and a black jacket with a silver fern emblem.

* Any information can be passed to the Operation Clover inquiry on (09) 295-0220.