Auckland man charged over unwanted, abusive texts to 10 women

Alexander Hola appeared in the Manukau District Court yesterday. Photo / File

An Auckland man has been charged with misusing a cellphone after he allegedly sent a raft of abusive, threatening and lewd texts to 10 women.

Alexander Hola, 25, appeared in the Manukau District Court yesterday.

The Otahuhu man faces nine charges of misusing a telephone and one of threatening behaviour.

He appeared before a registrar and was remanded until his next court date on August 18.

It is understood Hola is not known to any of the alleged victims. It was unclear how he selected the women or obtained their cellphone numbers.

As the matter was going before the courts police declined to comment further.

But one woman who allegedly received messages from Hola spoke to the Herald.

One of the alleged victims has spoken out about the messages she received.

The Auckland model and mum-of-two said she started getting phone calls from an unknown number.

"Every time I answered, no one was there," she said.

"So I text and said 'whoever this is, I can't hear you'. Then they started texting back."

The messages varied from full-on abuse to the woman being asked about her toddler twins, she said.

"He kept texting and calling. Once called at 6.30am and I didn't answer and then I got a text saying 'wake up b****'.

Another message read "shove a stick up your a**" and there were several asking if the woman was "keen to ****?"

She said the text messages were generally misspelled and littered with expletives and derogatory terms for women.

She said she never felt threatened, but found the constant messages and calls annoying.
"I just ignored it and thought 'what an idiot'. I thought they'd get bored," she said.

But the messages kept coming and eventually she responded, mocking the sender's poor spelling and grammar.

She said: "Sh*t you are hilarious. Who texts stuff like this to a stranger? Keep wasting your credit mate" and told him that he needed to "learn how to use punctuation and spell properly".

"I probably shouldn't have engaged. But I called him out. I found it rather amusing ... I thought it was just some bored teenager.

"I have no idea how he got my number. I don't think he necessarily knew who I was. I feel like he thought I was someone else."

After a few days she reported the messages to Vodafone, who passed the information to police.

She was told of the arrest when police contacted her on Monday.

She encouraged others to contact police or their cellphone provider if they received unwanted messages or calls.

"It's important that people know that if someone is abusing you there is help," she said.

IF you are receiving unwanted calls and messages:

If the calls are of a life threatening nature, contact the Police immediately.

Spark recommends:

• Record the date and time of at least three examples of unwanted calls or texts and enter them into the Nuisance Call Log.

• Important: Do not respond to the text or call, or no action can be taken.

• Once you have at least three examples of unwanted calls or texts in the log, call your network provider, who can trace the calls.