At least 15 teenagers a week are seeking therapy after being raped or sexually assaulted in the Western Bay of Plenty.
And that's just the workload of one sexual abuse counsellor out of about two dozen in Tauranga.
A leading specialist counsellor for sexual assault has spoken out about the alarming figures
- which show most victims either were drunk at the time or had their drinks spiked.
Denise McEnteer, who has 20 years' experience working with sexual assault victims, said "most" teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 18 were at risk because of the culture they were in.
She said in today's society, girls encouraged each other to drink excess amounts of alcohol and cocktails [alcohol mixed with drugs].
"It's not just the guys encouraging them."
Last year, she counselled an average of 15 Tauranga teens a week. One per cent were male.
Half the young people she saw had been drinking to excess at the time of the assault. About 30 per cent were historical survivors of serious childhood assault, and one in 10 were drink-spiking victims.
Only 10 per cent went to police.
Another Bay counsellor estimated about one in five teens aged 13 to 16 indulged in risky behaviour, and it was always at varying levels. Some may be sneaking out of home at night to meet an older boy and drive round town; others might be having sex and going to parties, but not touching alcohol or drugs.
Ms McEnteer works as an independent counsellor, having spent 10 years working in New Zealand and 10 in Australia, where she was part of the inaugural team which set up the Centre Against Sexual Assault (Casa) in Melbourne.
The centre was a world leader after just five years, and operated with a team of seven specialists.
She works independently in Tauranga and visits Otumoetai College's Wellness Centre one day a week. She also sees teenagers who are referred to her by the Western Bay's other seven secondary schools, and police.
Ms McEnteer said as the years went on, she had noticed victims of sexual assault had more confidence coming forward, because of communication.
"It is socially acceptable to talk about it, look at domestic violence now and the campaigns around that."
She said it was sad, however, that the message about the dangers of excessive drinking were not getting through.
Ms McEnteer knows of cases where girls as young as 15 were left on the side of the road naked, or with few clothes on after a night's drinking that ended in sexual assault.
The Bay teenagers often start their night out at a party in Tauranga, but then have it end by waking up naked with someone they don't know - and sometimes in a foreign town.
In most instances they remember tasting their first drink - but then nothing from that point on.
They wake up hours later, violently ill, unable to lift their head off the pillow and with a fragmented memory of the night before.
As extreme and disturbing as it sounds, Ms McEnteer, says with summer parties, "stranger rapes" are on the rise as more people are out socialising.
In the past week, she has seen 12 girls and two boys in Tauranga, all aged 13 to 16, who have been raped.
Some are historical cases, but most are current. The teens have been the victim of date rapes, as well as stranger rape and the victims of older boyfriends pressuring them in to sex.
One girl was even assaulted at school, during school hours.
She said young women were often the target of older boys or men who used alcohol as a ploy.
Ms McEnteer said it often started with a stranger or an acquaintance approaching the young girl at a party and saying "hello".
"They'll give her a drink with the lid off it - they've just done the gentlemanly thing right? Well, sometimes they've spiked [it].
Alternatively, there were themes coming through where there's been an excess amount of alcohol consumed.
"The young person has been drinking and they're off the planet. They wake up naked in various states of undress, not knowing who the guy is beside them."
She has spoken to girls who have woken up in Rotorua, Hamilton and Whakatane, or girls that have been dumped on the side of the road.
"It is [appalling]," she said.
Asked whether this was a fair representation of all the cases she was seeing, Ms McEnteer replied: "It's not frequent but it's not uncommon either."
"They think they can have sex with multiple partners and it won't affect them, but it does and they don't integrate it well.
"I often hear 'he pressured me and if I sleep with him I'll keep the relationship.' They can't divorce the emotion from the act.
"These teens are all taking a cocktail of drugs. They're taking all sorts of things along with getting pissed. Marijuana, party pills, even Ritalin which is available on the street, but the meanest ingredient in the cocktail is the alcohol.
"Alcohol is our worst demon. Alcohol gets our young people paralytic and totally wasted and the binge drinking is phenomenal. They'll have around 10 [RTDs] one after another, and then maybe have 10 more."
Ms McEnteer said young girls aged about 14 were awestruck by guys aged 18 or 19 and wanted to be seen to be cool around them.
She said the victims were traumatised by the rape for a long time afterwards and were often reluctant to come forward and report it to police because their memory was fragmented.
Sometimes the only indication they had of being raped was waking up and feeling sore.
"The hard thing is knowing something terrible has happened, but aren't sure quite what. Their imagination runs riot. Was it one guy? Was it a group?
"They are ashamed and embarrassed. They're unable to concentrate at school and and the impact on interpersonal relationships is phenomenal. They pull away from their guy buddies and even their girl buddies."
For those that are strong enough to report it to police, Ms McEnteer says the Tauranga officers are "fabulous" to work with and made a real difference.
The recovery process varied depending on each person's strength of character and well-being prior to the rape, she said.
