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The Court of Appeal has reduced by three years the minimum sentence of a man who raped a woman in her home just south of Auckland in 2006.
But Roger Tira Kahui's appeal against his conviction was dismissed and a sentence of preventive detention remained.
Kahui - a relative of Chris Kahui, who was acquitted this year of the murders of his twin sons - was sentenced last year in the High Court at Auckland to preventive detention, with no chance of release for 16 years.
A jury found him guilty of 26 charges including rape, kidnap, sexual violence and indecent assault.
In June 2006, Kahui knocked on the door of his 37-year-old victim's Pukekohe home asking to use the phone, and forced his way inside. He then beat her up before raping her and committing other sexual acts in her bedroom and living room in what was a 4-hour ordeal.
He forced her to watch and re-enact scenes from a pornographic film and made her shower on at least two occasions to wash away evidence of his DNA.
Kahui then handcuffed the woman and drove her to a bank to withdraw cash from an ATM machine, but she escaped and ran to a petrol station for help.
During his sentencing, Justice Hugh Williams said society needed to be protected from a man who had more than 120 previous convictions. Kahui's past sentences amounted to more than 100 years in jail, albeit imposed concurrently.
He had also shown no remorse and no willingness to rehabilitate himself in any previous visits to jail and the only likely reason his list of offences was not longer was that he was in jail for much of the past 20 years, Justice Williams said.
In their decision released yesterday, Justices Ellen France, Judith Potter and Alan MacKenzie said Justice Williams had used a sentencing benchmark that was too high for the crimes committed.
But that did not mean Kahui would be released in 13 years whatever else happened, they said.
He would not be released into the community until the Parole Board was satisfied he would not be a risk to anyone.
- NZPA