Words: Anna Leask
Editor: Andrew Laxon
Design: Paul Slater
Warning: This story contains graphic and disturbing content and some explicit language.

Before the Jaz brothers, Katherine and Penny were happy, excited and ordinary young women enjoying a night out in Christchurch.  But afterwards, their lives were turned upside down.  

Like so many before them, they did nothing wrong.  

They did not consent to the substances that went into their bodies or the sexual assaults that followed. 

There were many young women before Katherine and Penny*, and there were some after.  

But it was their story that brought down the predatory Jaz brothers, Danny and Roberto, finally ending their hunting days at the family bar which operated as their sexual playground.  

Video footage provided to the court during the Jaz brothers’ rape and assault trial shows the dramatic change in the women, from confident, carefree and happy to stumbling and awkward, fidgety and clearly under the influence of something.  

It wasn’t until the next day when Katherine and Penny started messaging that they realised the enormity of what had happened to them.  

And it was that day that marked the beginning of the end for Danny and Roberto Jaz.  

But where did it all begin - and how did these two sex-obsessed offenders get their hands on so many women for so long without any recourse? 

Danny and Roberto Jaz were born and raised in Australia to Macedonian emigrant parents.  Their father Michael Jaz moved the family to Auckland in 2001 and several years later they shifted to Christchurch and opened the restaurant Portofino on Oxford Tce.  

After the 2011 earthquake, Michael Jaz established Italian restaurant Venuti on Colombo St and later when a nearby site became available, he opened Mama Hooch. 

His boys were at the centre of the family’s hospitality empire - Roberto working as a chef at Venuti and Danny a duty manager at Mama Hooch.  

Michael’s third son Davide also worked at Hooch. Neither man was charged with any offending.  

From its inception, the bar appeared destined to be a place where women were unlikely to be respected. 

The Herald has obtained this video showing Danny Jaz at Mama Hooch singing along to the explicit lyrics of Backseat Freestyle by Kendrick Lamar..... "I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower. So I can f... the world for seventy-two hours. Goddamn I got bitches (okay!) damn I got bitches (okay!). Damn I got bitches, wifey, girlfriend and mistress. All my life I want money and power."

The court heard that the bar's name was a clear reflection of the intentions of the men running it. 

“A play on the term ‘Hoochy Mama’, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as a young woman, especially a promiscuous one or in a sexually provocative way,” said Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae.

“Both Danny and Roberto Jaz used their position to attract the young females by providing them with VIP treatment, such as skipping the queue inside the bar and giving them free alcoholic drinks and drugs. 

“Further, Danny and Roberto used their position as owners to administer or facilitate the administration of the alcoholic drinks, mixed with stupefying substance.” 

Mama Hooch was one of the most popular bars in Christchurch and was frequented by not just the local "it" crowd but many celebs and VIPs. The Crown Prosecutor's office is nearby and lawyers often went to the bar for coffees and drinks. Former Prime Minister Sir John Key and boxer Joseph Parker appeared in photos with the Jaz brothers on social media after spending time there.

Katherine and Penny both - repeatedly - asked Roberto what he was offering them. 

He assured them it was MDMA.  

They had no reason not to trust him and took turns snorting the powder.  

Immediately, they both knew something was very, very wrong. 

It was unlike anything they had taken before - their vision blurred and blacked out, their nose and throat burned, and they felt like they had no control over their bodies, that they were “under water”. 

“I can’t see,” Penny screamed at Katherine, who was “blanking in and out”. 

“Katherine was just rolling around on the ground talking to herself, and then I remember him on top of me … he was grinding against me … I just kept blacking out. 

“I remember him pulling Katherine round by her hair … I went to the bathroom to get away from him … after we took the drug, I didn’t feel safe around him. I couldn’t look after myself, I could hardly stand. 

“I remember seeing (Katherine) unconscious and I remember seeing him kissing her from her face to her body … her telling him to f*** off ...  telling him this isn’t right and he just kept telling her to shut up… she got really angry but then she would pass out again.” 

Katherine remembers the violation in splinters and shards, fleeting and scrambled flashes of horror.  

“I remember him being on top of me in the back of the restaurant … He was so strong and I couldn’t move … he kept on putting his hand on my face and trying to kiss me … I also remember I must have been trying to get away and trying to walk and I couldn’t walk. 

“The whole time I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. 

“He had all the control, he was so strong … and I couldn’t get away … I was scared and (Penny) was scared too and whatever was happening was really dangerous. 

“It was like being in water … my ears were ringing and I couldn’t see, I just felt really confused. I had no idea what was going on. 

“I just remember trying to move … I kept on trying to say ‘stop, no’...  It was almost like sleep paralysis, like I was in and out, semi-coherent … aware of what was happening but I couldn’t do anything to get away from that space because my body wouldn’t allow me to.” 

When they finally left Venuti the women’s lives had changed forever, but they wouldn’t know it for some hours - and are still grappling with it years on.

Penny ran, manically, down Colombo St, passing the cameras outside Mama Hooch as she fled - an image of a dishevelled and frantic woman captured as a passing blur.  

She got in her car and drove to a friend’s house, hoping she would crash or be pulled over - anything to alert police to what had just happened to her. 

Meanwhile Roberto Jaz led a clearly wasted Katherine to nearby strip club Calendar Girls.  

Footage there shows a young woman unable to sit still, who cannot stop flicking her hair around between lolling her head from side to side and moving and touching her face.  

She remembers nothing. Not a second of it.  

A staffer from Calendar Girls - who knows Katherine - gave evidence about the night at trial. 

 “She was swaying and could not walk in a straight line. She thought she must have been drunk or on drugs,” said Judge Paul Mabey. 

“Her eyes were blank, she was not talking clearly so she took her to a seating area. Her head was going from side to side and what she observed was different than what she knows to be the effect of MDMA.  

“Through her work (the witness) is aware of the effects of drugs and alcohol and has seen people affected by both. She said Katherine’s appearance of 9/10 intoxication was not as a result of alcohol alone. 

“She has seen Katherine on MDMA in the past where she is stimulated, happy and coherent.” 

The next day Penny went to the hospital, terrified of what she had ingested and what it could do to her body and mind.

She texted Katherine:

Katherine and Penny were both interviewed by police the day after they were drugged and assaulted and Roberto Jaz was arrested on the Monday.  

Police raided Venuti and found evidence that matched the women’s allegations - bodily fluids and traces of illicit drugs.

Roberto Jaz admitted he’d invited Katherine down to Venuti but said anything that happened was consensual.  

He said there were no drugs, that Katherine had “initiated” things because she had a crush on him.  

She was so keen, he claimed, that she scratched his neck in the heat of passion.  

He showed police the marks, which were photographed for evidence.  

The court would later hear that it was more likely the scratches were inflicted by one of the women as they desperately tried to escape their sexual attacker.

Roberto’s interview with police was ever-changing and farcical.  

He denied Penny was even there for a start but later suggested “if” another woman was there maybe she’d let herself in an unlocked door.  

Then, he suggested maybe he didn’t remember because he was drunk. 

Then, he suggested maybe he didn’t remember because HIS drink had been spiked.  

“If it’s come across [as an assault], I kind of feel bad for that now,” he told police.  

“I could’ve potentially had something put in my drink, I don’t know … which made me lose my memory. 

“That’s very disturbing for me … You know, it doesn’t sound like me.”

After the women complained, police launched Operation Sinatra and by August 2018 they had linked 24 complaints of drink spiking in the police database to Mama Hooch. 

Detectives contacted Sophie Brown who had made a complaint in 2017 about Danny Jaz sexually assaulting her. 

She had recorded a statement and underwent a forensic examination but was later told there was not enough evidence to charge her attacker. 

But once Operation Sinatra got going police told Brown they would now be charging Danny Jaz with two counts of sexually violating her and one of stupefying her. 

All complainants and victims of sexual offending are afforded, under New Zealand law, automatic and permanent name suppression. 

Earlier Brown waived hers so she could tell her story.  

“I was trying to go, ‘Okay I need to start searching in my head and figure out when that happened’, and also ‘Why can’t I remember the second half of the night’ and everything like that and, when I was trying to remember, it just hit me and I just screamed,” she told the Herald. 

“It was an instant reaction. My drink was spiked, and I was assaulted by the same guy.” 

When details of Operation Sinatra hit the news and police named Mama Hooch as the bar at the centre of the investigation, the allegations against the Jaz brothers and others connected to them began to snowball.

The day after police went public Roberto Jaz was stopped at Christchurch Airport attempting to board a 5.35am flight to Sydney.  

He claimed he was going to see a friend and planned to return the next week, and that his lawyer had told him he could go. 

He was quickly delivered to the Christchurch Central Police Station, where he was arrested and charged in relation to the assault on Katherine and Penny.  

On November 15, 2018, he was charged with rape, unlawful sexual connection, making intimate recordings, possessing objectionable material, stupefying and supplying Class B drugs. 

Danny Jaz was also charged with rape, stupefying and supplying Class B drugs. 

While Roberto’s offending took centre-stage during much of the trial, it has to be noted that his older brother’s crimes were just as prolific and serious. 

The rapists - and their supporters - tried to brush off the messaging.  

Boys will be boys. 

Banter.  

Locker room chat.  

Jokes.   

“The hard and inescapable reality is that the targeting of staff and patrons for sexual purposes, the treatment of staff and patrons as sexual objects... the drugging of those that were sexually offended against... is far from a joke,” said Judge Mabey. 

“All of those matters are indicative of an arrogant, entitled and hubristic approach to young women that came within the orbit of the Jaz brothers in the conduct and of their business at Mama Hooch and Venuti, and who were seen as fair game, indifferent to their rights and indifferent to consent.” 

He highlighted one conversation in particular where Roberto Jaz mentioned rape. 

“I do not consider the reference to ‘rape’ to be a flippant joke,” the judge said. 

Further, he said Roberto Jaz using the word was “indicative of a mindset of arrogance and entitlement”. 

Judge Mabey heard the case alone after the Jaz brothers changed their election from a jury trial just days out from the start of proceedings. 

He blasted the brothers in his 162-page verdict, saying the evidence was clear. 

Roberto Jaz “takes females to Venuti, offers them drugs and sexually offends against them”. 

Further, he had “a sexual interest in, and engages in sexual activity with, females without consent” and he was “indifferent to consent”. 

Danny Jaz was equally indifferent and, in his ruling, Judge Mabey outlined a number of examples where Danny drugged women then “positioned himself in a way that enabled him to take the complainant into a toilet cubicle and commit a sexual assault”. 

“Danny Jaz has a propensity to drug patrons at Mama Hooch.  

“There is a distinct pattern involving Danny Jaz. Females are drugged and he ends up in the toilet area at the point that they are ready to go into the cubicle.  

“The only available inference is that he disabled (women) using an unknown substance in one of the drinks that he provided.” 

Judge Mabey is expected to expand on his reasons on Thursday when he delivers the brothers’ fate at sentencing. 

Both men face up to 20 years in prison for their offending, described as the worst of its kind in New Zealand.  

“Roberto Jaz’s character and motivations (are) consistent with the propensities established by the evidence, and his willingness to exploit females as playthings who exist for his benefit and whose rights for which he has complete disregard,” the judge said. 

“Not to be outdone, Danny Jaz shows the same mendacity when speaking to journalists about police publicity concerning complaints of drink-spiking at Mama Hooch. 

“He said, ‘If we caught those responsible, God help them, I’d break their hands and hand them over to the police’. At this point his brother had been charged and he had himself drugged and sexually offended against multiple victims.” 

On the first day of the Jaz brothers' trial, Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae summed them up as offenders “fixated on sex” who routinely targeted “much younger” women with a clear “indifference to consent”. 

“When they were unable to establish consensual relations with females - notwithstanding the fact that they were all in long-standing relationships with their respective partners - they turn to means by which such sexual contact could be facilitated, and typically, that meant drugs,” McRae said. 

“There were occasions where females rejected unwanted sexual advances from the defendants after being given free drugs and or alcohol. These females were significantly younger than the defendants and were not sexually interested. 

“Further, [the men worked to] facilitate the administration of the alcoholic drinks, mixed with stupefying substance. It’s alleged that this was to encourage the atmosphere … to lower the resistance to the advances.” 

For the officer who led Operation Sinatra there was only one word to describe the Jaz brothers. 

“Predators,” said Detective Inspector Scott Anderson, 

“When you look at how the whole thing ran at Mama Hooch - it was total predatory behaviour. 

“They were living out some kind of fantasy… they thought they could do whatever they liked with whoever fell in front of them. 

“I really think their Whatsapp [and other group chats] was an unfiltered insight into how they lived their lives - an unfiltered look into their lives. 

“Some people will say it’s ‘boys being boys’ or ‘locker room chat’ but it’s actually what happened and it ended with sexual offending. 

“It was a real insight into how they mistreated and disrespected women.” 

* Names have been changed as the women’s identities are suppressed. 

Sexual harm 

Where to get help: 
• If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111
• If you’ve ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone, contact Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7
• Call 0800 044 334 
• Text 4334 
• Email support@safetotalk.nz 
• For more info or to web chat visit Safe to Talk
• Alternatively contact your local police station
• If you have been sexually assaulted, remember it’s not your fault.