Schizophrenic man jailed seven years for rape

A schizophrenic Northland man who "wanted to kill people" has been jailed for seven years after pulling a knife on a 19-year- old woman and raping her.

Shannon Walter Mokoraka, 30, unemployed of the Kaipara district, was sentenced in the Whangarei District Court on Wednesday after earlier pleading guilty to charges of rape and possessing an offensive weapon.

The police summary of facts said Mokoraka and his younger brother visited a woman, whose name is suppressed, and her boyfriend near Dargaville on May 8 this year.

Later that afternoon her boyfriend and Mokoraka's younger brother went out to buy fish and chips for dinner.

When Mokoraka was alone in the house with the woman he said he wanted to kill people but he didn't have a reason to kill anyone.

A short time later he asked the woman if she wanted to have sex, but she said no.

Feeling uncomfortable, she went into her bedroom but on two occasions he walked in uninvited.

Then he entered her room a third time, closed the door behind him, stood in the doorway, stared at her with a "funny look", and said he couldn't stop thinking about it.

She walked towards the door but he pulled out a 17cm knife, held it with both hands and said "don't make me use it".

"She tried to push her way past him but he grabbed her from behind and wrapped both of his arms around her," the police summary of facts said.

He then raped her.

Crown prosecutor Bernadette O'Connor said Mokoraka suffered from schizophrenia but the condition appeared to be "relatively well controlled" at the time of the offending.

However Mokoraka's lawyer, John Watson said his client was suffering from mental illness, namely psychosis, hallucinations and paranoia, which were consistent with schizophrenia at the time of the offending.

In sentencing, Judge Graham Hubble said Mokoraka was a paranoid schizophrenic but he was in remission and knew what was going on at the time of the crime. The judge accepted a probation officer's report stating some of Mokoraka's ideas had been "bizarre" in the days following the crime.

Taking into account Mokoraka's guilty plea and his "lesser degree of moral culpability" because of his schizophrenia, Judge Hubble handed down a seven- year sentence for rape and an 18-month sentence for possession of an offensive weapon. The knife sentence was to be served concurrently with the rape sentence, effectively resulting in a seven-year total prison term for both offences.

- NORTHERN ADVOCATE, WHANGAREI