A 24-year-old seasonal worker from Vanuatu, Steven Tari Tambean Garae, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for raping an 11-year-old girl at the Blenheim train station.
Garae had previously pleaded guilty to rape and unlawful sexual connection, each carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment.
The attack occurred on April 2023, when Garae followed a bike ride with her friend, who was on a scooter. Garae dragged the girl by the wrist into a public toilet, locked the door, and sexually violated and raped her.
The victim’s friend ran across State Highway 1 to get help from people in a nearby bakery. The attack lasted seven minutes, after which Garae ran off but was later found by police and arrested.
He initially claimed the sex was consensual before admitting to raping the girl. The victim reported feeling sad and depressed, and her grandmother said that Garae had given the victim a lifetime sentence.
The girl suffered internal injuries as a result of the rape, and she had to fly to Auckland for a sexual assault forensic exam, including pregnancy and STI tests.
Her grandmother felt sick to the stomach that a person could think they could do such sexual acts on an 11-year-old child and think it would be consensual. Family members expressed disappointment with the prison sentence, which came with a minimum period of imprisonment of three and a half years, which they said was not long enough.
Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber described the incident as an “appalling rape of a vulnerable girl” and the kind of offending that was “terrifying for the community.” Garae’s defence counsel, Emma Riddell, said that Garae had not coped well with being sent to New Zealand, and his segregation while incarcerated had increased his mental impairment.
Garae would be deported once he had served his sentence and would not be released back into the community or allowed to enter the country again.
Judge Zohrab said Garae’s selfish behavior had a catastrophic impact on the victim, her family, and the wider community. Locals in Blenheim are wondering what is going on in their community if two 11-year-old girls can’t go out on a bike and a scooter without being violated in this way.
