Teen's rape nightmare lives on

David Mamea in court yesterday. Picture / Kenny Rodger

If she can muster the courage, a tiny 15-year-old Vietnamese girl will carry a weapon through the hallways of her home to the toilet tonight.

She will leave the room where her family all sleep together, walking with her sister or her mother by her side.

Every bump in the dark will leave them wondering who or what may come and when the teenager falls back asleep she will likely be haunted by nightmares.

They are caused by David Mamea, the man who stabbed her, raped her while she was unconscious and bleeding and threw her over a back garden fence, leaving her for dead.

The 18-year-old was yesterday sentenced to 16 years in prison with a 10-year non-parole period.

Justice Graham Lang said the attack, in the early hours of New Year's Eve 2004, was one of the worst of its kind.

Police are still searching for a second offender who was with Mamea that night. They have his DNA, it was spread all over the girl's duvet, but Mamea refuses to reveal his identity.

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Sue Schwalger, said the girl was happy Mamea was behind bars but she lived in fear of the second man.

As Justice Lang handed down Mamea's sentence in the High Court at Auckland yesterday, discussing a sentence starting point, all Mamea could do was shuffle his feet, screw up his face and mutter a frustrated expletive.

The judge said the teenager showed no insight into his offending and little remorse.

Mamea had burgled another house, stealing car keys and a car while the owners were home just one month after he nearly killed the girl.

The home owner caught him in the garage and Mamea sped off in his car, eventually crashing it into a tree.

That was how police found him. A police search at his home found the Vietnamese girl's mother's purse.

Chillingly, the purse had been stolen months earlier: The night he attacked the girl while her parents were out was not the first time he had visited the family's home.

"Your offending has wrecked the lives of an entire family, it has left the complainant with lasting physical and psychological scars which may never heal," Justice Lang said yesterday.

When she wakes tomorrow morning and stretches the girl will feel Mamea's attack, the pain still present from the 10 times he stabbed her body.

When she says good morning it will be through a tube surgically inserted into her throat. Mamea narrowly missed her carotid artery when he stabbed her in the neck.

When she dresses she will see a bite mark on her inner thigh, caused by Mamea's teeth.

The girl, whose slight frame made her look years younger than 15 when she gave evidence in court, feels as if she is "damaged goods".

Although she was raped, in Vietnamese culture the attack has brought many other difficulties.

Yesterday Justice Lang said he was satisfied it was Mamea who inflicted the girl's wounds, although Mamea still tries to say he was picked up by a group of people he did not know, taken to the house and forced at gunpoint to stab the girl once and pull down his pants.

At points yesterday he rolled his eyes and he looked indifferent.

His lawyer, Mary Tuilotolava, argued that the existence of Mamea's bloody handprint on the girl's sheets, in a position which would suggest he was over the top of her, did not mean he had raped her.

She said the two pubic hairs police found, one blood soaked, did not mean he had raped her.

Justice Lang said the jury that convicted him last month thought otherwise and said he did not believe Mamea's story.

He believed Mamea was drunk and angry that night, he had fought with his best friend and his other friends did not want him around.

The-then 16-year-old had been taken home and somewhere along the way he met his male accomplice.

He went to the girl's house, one he had been in before, probably knowing that at least one young girl lived there.

"Your whole intention of entering the property that night of the incident was to sexually violate a female occupant of the address," Justice Lang said.

Crown prosecutor Steven Haszard outlined the effect Mamea had on the girl and her family.

Her mother blamed herself for not being home when the attack happened, the girl was likely to undergo further surgery involving the tube in her neck, which had already collapsed twice leaving her mute, her family slept together in one room out of fear and knocks at the door alarmed them.

The girl carried a weapon with her if she had to get up to the toilet at night, forcing her mother or sister to go with her, and a simple stretch caused pain, Mr Haszard said.

She looked in fear at any unknown Polynesian man on the street, wondering if he was Mamea's accomplice.

Police have taken DNA samples from most of Mamea's known friends and associates with no positive matches. Ms Schwalger said the case would remain open until the second offender was found.

Mr Haszard said he hoped it would be before whoever it was reoffended.