KEY POINTS:
A man has been jailed after the DNA sample he gave at a road incident identified him as a rapist six years earlier.
Pop Tanupou E'Moala Aholelei admitted a charge of raping a drunken woman in August 2001, after he watched her stagger from an Auckland nightclub.
The guilty plea followed a motor accident late last year when he gave a voluntary DNA sample which was linked with forensic evidence from the rape.
He was today sentenced to a jail sentence of for 7-1/2 years.
Judge Mary-Beth Sharp told Aholelei, 34, in Auckland District Court today: "You showed no intention of desisting despite her cries of pain."
The woman's intoxication made her particularly vulnerable "and you took advantage of that vulnerability," she said.
The judge said the victim impact report made horrifying reading and the woman continued to be affected to this day.
"It was animal behaviour," the judge said.
Aholelei's lawyer Graeme Newell said his client had written a letter of apology and had completed courses while in custody.
He said he had not forced the victim into his car and no force had been used during the rape.
However, he said the victim was vulnerable and that was probably why the crime was committed.
Aholelei is Tongan but has New Zealand residency and is living with his wife and child.
The court was told he was a good worker and of good character until the rape happened.
The attack in the Parnell Rose Gardens was front-page news at the time and led to a major police inquiry.
But with few leads other than a DNA sample, the case was shelved.
Then in June last year Aholelei was interviewed by a constable after a car crash and - in what detectives described as a naive decision - he volunteered a DNA sample.
At the national DNA database it was matched to the sample taken from the rape.
Aholelei was arrested in August last year - almost five years to the day after the rape.
His guilty plea in the Auckland District Court spared the victim returning from her new home in Australia to give evidence.
Detective Constable Damian Espinosa said last month that the victim had mixed emotions. She was traumatised by the ordeal but also relieved she would not have to relive it in court.
Aholelei's sample was one of the 71,934 on the national DNA database.
- NZPA, NZHERALD STAFF
