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Warning: Distressing content.
A Mongrel Mob member went to the home of a woman who lived alone and physically, sexually and mentally tortured her for four hours.
Now Richard Paru from Tūrangi will spend 10 years in jail for his 2022 offending.
Paru, who is a patched Tūrangi Mongrel Mob member, appeared in the Rotorua District Court yesterday for sentencing on a range of serious charges. Paru was to stand trial earlier this year but changed his pleas to guilty just days before his trial.
Judge David Cameron described Paru as having a high risk of reoffending. He has 42 previous convictions including for a range of violent offences such as threatening to kill, two counts of intentional damage and assaulting police.
During his remand period, he was subject to 38 misconduct complaints in prison including assaulting prison staff, inciting violence, fighting, possessing cannabis and possessing weapons, Judge Cameron said.
Paru will serve 10 years’ imprisonment on nine charges - kidnapping, injuring with intent to injure, sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, two charges of threatening to kill, assaulting a female, demanding with menace, wounding with intent to injure and assault with intent to rob.
Judge Cameron outlined what happened, saying Paru, then aged 25, went to the woman’s Tūrangi house on April 6, 2022. He knew the woman but they weren’t considered close. It was about 11pm and the woman was home alone watching television.
Richard Paru has been jailed for 10 years for torturing, assaulting and sexually abusing a woman in her own home in Tūrangi in 2022. Photo / Kelly Makiha
Paru asked the woman if she had any cigarettes and she said she did and went inside to get some. But Paru let himself in and started pacing around the lounge.
Judge Cameron said the woman noticed the car that dropped Paru off had left her driveway and she became afraid.
He started making angry and accusatory statements towards the woman and began assaulting her. He then forced her to perform a sexual act while he videoed it.
During the prolonged attack, he demanded she admit on video she was a methamphetamine cook and apologise to people unknown to her.
She refused to admit it and, as a result, he slapped her on the back of the head about 11 times, Judge Cameron said.
He told her: “Stop f***ing around or I’ll kill you with my bare hands”.
He told her to strip naked but he got more aggressive when he felt she wasn’t doing it fast enough.
He pulled her around the room naked by her hair while he kicked and stomped on her and again demanded she make admissions on video.
During a struggle, he sliced her leg twice with a large knife, put it on her stomach, threw her against a table causing her head to bleed, and walked over her back. He then told her to get in the car despite the fact she was naked, Judge Cameron said.
He drove her in her car to a residential street and told her to “get her arse home”. As he drove off, the woman hid in some trees until she knew he was gone before running naked to a friend’s home to get help.
In her victim impact statement, read to the court by Crown prosecutor Anna McConachy, the woman detailed her ordeal.
“I was kicked and rag-dolled around my home by my hair, dragged and thrown from room to room, repeatedly smacked and kicked in the head and body, forced to perform a sexual act on the offender while he videoed it on my phone and threatened repeatedly of more violence, rape and death if I didn’t do what I was told by the offender.”
She said after seeking help, she spent the day in hospital having scans and X-rays, and she had two large cuts in her head stapled.
She suffered a concussion, bruising to her arms and legs, facial bruising, headaches and loss of appetite.
She went from being a happy woman working fulltime and enjoying her life to being unable to work, depressed and living in isolation.
Richard Paru attacked the woman in her Tūrangi home. Photo / Jared Goedhart
She now suffered disorientation, insomnia, night terrors, anxiety, chronic fatigue, memory loss, vision impairment and rotated discs in her hips.
“He tormented me with the knowledge that he had spent almost a year watching my life.”
She said he lived nearby and could watch her regularly. She said she believed it wasn’t a random attack or opportunistic crime.
“This was planned, calculated and an intentional act on me. He was a predator and I was his prey.”
’Disease of the mind’
Paru’s lawyer, Racheal Raukawa, said the delay in Paru’s guilty plea was because he was mentally unfit to plead to charges.
“While there was evidence of methamphetamine use, while he was in custody and clean from methamphetamine, his symptoms didn’t improve for a very long period of time.”
She said there was evidence he was hearing voices in his head before his offending.
She said a report on Paru found he had a “disease of the mind”. She said he still struggled to accept details in the police’s summary of facts but she said that was a reflection of his mental health and how unwell he would have been at the time.
She said he had grown facial hair to cover his gang tattoos and he wanted to have them removed.
“He has advised he has left the gang and is well now. He understands that being involved in a criminal organisation is not in his best interests.”
The sentence
In sentencing Paru, Judge Cameron noted Paru was earlier given a sentence indication by another judge of 11 years’ jail. Paru didn’t accept that sentence indication.
Judge Cameron agreed with McConachy and Raukawa that the starting point should be 12 years’ jail.
He disagreed with Raukawa that there should be a 30% reduction for Paru’s remorse and background issues, including mental health, and instead only gave a 5% reduction. He gave a reduction of 10% for his guilty plea.
That took the sentence down to 10 years and two months’ jail which Judge Cameron rounded down to the end sentence of 10 years’ jail.
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.
