Mob member 'ruined my life'

A Hastings woman fled her home with her children and partner after allegedly being raped by a Mongrel Mob member as he and two others came to collect her partner's drug debt, a trial has been told in the Napier District Court.
The woman told of the fear which drove her out during more than three hours of evidence yesterday, the first day of the trial of Don Hemi Waiau Bartlett, 33, and Ronnie Sydney Wharepapa, 34, on two charges of rape relating to events late on the night of July 21 last year.
The woman said she rounded-up the children who had been sleeping in the lounge, gathered what belongings she could, left with her partner and never went back.
They hid at different people's homes and ultimately she was given a new identity under the police witness protection scheme.
But at the end of an often-tearful time in the witness box, much of it spent facing a wall away from the two accused, she said it was "not a fresh start" and it had ruined her life.
Opening the case yesterday, Crown prosecutor Clayton Walker said it was Bartlett who raped the woman, encouraged by Wharepapa who the Crown says did nothing to help her after she pleaded with him to make Bartlett stop.
Bartlett, represented by Tony Snell, and Wharepapa, represented by Trent Petherick, have both pleaded not guilty, and Wharepapa also denies selling cannabis to the woman's partner.
The woman told Judge Geoff Rea and a jury of six men and six women, which was reduced to 11 after one woman was discharged from duty early in the hearing, that she and her partner had just had sex when the two men arrived in a ute driven by a third person, about 11.30pm.
Her partner hid when the men arrived, and the woman told them he was out.
As she stood in the drive talking with the men, who she said had been drinking, Bartlett began touching her and pushing her inside towards a bedroom.
She said she knew Wharepapa and trusted him, but when she asked him to stop Bartlett, he repeatedly told her it was alright.
The woman told Bartlett her brother was in the house, and talked loudly hoping her partner would come to her aid, but the partner later said that when he saw her being pushed into the bedroom, he crept out of the bathroom where he had hidden and "bolted" to call the police.
Wharepapa, still outside, saw the man and went into the house where the woman, on her back on a bed with Bartlett on top of her, heard Wharepapa saying: "Bro ...Bro."
Bartlett stopped and got off, but got back on and raped her again.
Minutes later, a police officer arrived and entered the room where Bartlett was still having sex with the woman. The men claimed nothing was wrong, and the woman, fearing retaliation, told police she did not wish to make any complaint. After being questioned by police in the house, the men were allowed to leave, laughing and barking as they went, the woman said.
But about a week later the woman and her partner made a formal complaint.
She told the court that on a previous occasion she had been beaten by a mob member when she refused oral sex and throughout the ordeal last July feared a beating if she refused, or that it would be taken out on her family.
She had feared the same consequences if she made a complaint to the police, but changed her mind after her partner said they would "keep coming back anyway".
She said she didn't scream during the rape, because she did not want to wake her children.
The woman's partner told the court he had bought five "tinnies" from Wharepapa on credit, and had been given a two-day extension to the day after the alleged rape happened.