John Hope Muchirahondo is standing trial at the High Court in Christchurch. Photo / Pool
WARNING: This story references sexual assaults.
The trial for alleged serial rapist John Hope Muchirahondo will move into its third week tomorrow - with another seven weeks to go. At least.
The Zimbabwean-born 36-year-old is accused of raping or violating 15 women over 12 years.
He met some at bars or parties. He knew others socially or as friends. Several were ex-partners.
On many occasions, the alleged offending was filmed or photographed by the accused, the High Court in Christchurch has heard.
“What the Crown says happened on each occasion was that the defendant was helping himself to women’s bodies without consent or care,” said Crown prosecutor Will Taffs.
Muchirahondo has denied all of the charges, saying any sexual contact with the women was consensual.
Here is what the first four complainants told the jury.
The fourth complainant was 18 when she met Muchirahondo at a bar.
He initially told her his name was Jordan, that he was 24, and that he was an African “prince”.
He was 35 at the time.
The pair had a brief casual and consensual relationship.
One night after she had been out with friends she said Muchirahondo picked her up and drove her to his friend’s house.
There, they had consensual sex. Then the woman went to sleep.
“I had a fair bit to drink… I wasn’t super drunk… I was just tipsy,” the court heard.
“And then I remember I woke up and he rolled me over and he started… I said stop and he didn’t.
“I think I just fought…I moved my leg and then I said ‘stop’.
“I said ‘what are you doing’ and he continued… this is when his hands moved up to near my waist and he continued to… and I was like no, I said ‘no can we just not?’ And he didn’t listen.
“I said ‘no… stop’...And then I felt defeated so I just kinda lay there and allowed it.”
The third woman had been out with a friend and was about to head home when she was invited to have a drink with a group of men.
She said Muchirahondo was one of them.
“They seemed pretty safe,” she said in her police evidential interview.
“We talked about his kid... the fact he was a father made me feel comfortable around him.”
She went to another bar with Muchirahondo and his friend, who bought her a drink.
“I drank that and everything kinda started getting hazy,” she said.
When the bar closed she said Muchirahodo suggested: “Let’s not stop the party let’s go to my place I’ve got drinks”.
“They offered me another drink... I had a sip and I felt completely inebriated,” she said.
Soon after Muchirahondo’s friend became “really angry”, she told police, and they had to leave the house.
“I remember feeling afraid, scared of how [he] was reacting cos it came out of nowhere… so I was happy to leave with [Muchirahondo].
“I told him ‘I need to go home’ and he was like ‘you’re too drunk to go home… we’ll go to my place.”
Her next memory is being in Muchirahondo’s bedroom.
And then: “I remember coming to for about maybe two seconds and I was on the end of the bed with my pants down.
“I remember looking up at him and wondering what was happening and why we were having sex... He was kind of grinning over me as he was doing it.
“I also remember thinking there is no way I would’ve ever had sex with him so I was super confused how this had come to be.
“I couldn’t do anything, it was like I wasn’t in my body. I opened my eyes and saw what was happening but it was like I wasn’t there. I could feel what was happening and I saw what was happening but I couldn’t do anything.”
She said she woke later to Muchirahondo slapping her face and telling her she had to leave.
He drove her to the city and when she got near her accommodation she got out of the car and ran off, locking herself in her room.
She “blacked out” again, the court heard.
“It wasn’t until the Saturday when I met up with one of my girlfriends for lunch and I was telling her the story and I was brushing it off… she goes ‘what happened wasn’t okay and you need to do something about it’,” she said.
“I know I did not consent to have sex with that boy. I would never have consented to have sex with him because he is not the type of man that I would pick up, if I did pick up. And the nature of the sex is not the kind… it’s not how I go about being intimate with somebody.”
The second woman had known Muchirahondo for around four years and he had offered to sober drive her and a girlfriend on a night out.
At the end of the night, he dropped the women home.
They went into the house and as far as the woman knew, Muchirahondo drove off straight away. She said there had been no discussion about him coming in, and he never got out of the car.
“When we got home we made some food… I remember getting dressed into a baggy T-shirt and then I remember hopping in bed… sculling some water cos I had drunken a bit too much that night,” she said to police in an interview relayed to the court.
“I went to sleep and that’s when I woke up to him having sex with me when I was drunk, coma’d out in the bed.
“I wasn’t awake… I was drifting in and out... I just didn’t have the energy to [say] stop. I was just out to it.
“I think I just laid there… just waiting for it to be over… I couldn’t move or anything... I don’t really remember it stopping, I just remember a weight being lifted off me and him leaving… no words, no words at all.”
The woman “pushed it to the back” of her mind the next day, unsure of her memories.
“It wasn’t until a couple of days later I was like - that’s not right.
“I remember telling my friend and she nearly cried because she was there and if she knew she would’ve stopped it.”
The woman initially told police her friend had been asleep in her child’s room. But in a second interview, she admitted her friend had been in bed with her.
She said she had lied to police because her friend did not want to get involved with the investigation.
She admitted she had “kissed” Muchirahondo in the past but had never gone any further with him sexually.
“That night we were just laughing and having fun. I never thought that would happen cos we were just being friends,” she said.
“I was not all there… I was slurring my words, couldn’t walk properly, had no control of my body really.”
The woman spoke to police about a year after the alleged rape. She did not report Muchirahondo, rather police contacted her during their investigation into other complaints.
The jury was played a woman’s harrowing call to 111 after Muchirahondo allegedly raped her on a couch where she’d been sleeping.
The court heard that she and a friend ran into Muchirahondo on a night out in February 2021 and later he offered to take her home in a taxi because she was intoxicated.
Instead of taking her home, they went to his place. The woman went to sleep on a couch in the living room.
“I woke up to Hope on top of me having sex with me,” she said.
“When he started to realise I was awake he was like, ‘oh f***’, and got off me.
“I said I need to go home. I want to go home and he said ‘I’ll walk you home’.
“We went outside and I was crying - he said ‘why are you crying? Stop crying’.”
“I was scared. I didn’t want to confront him too aggressively. I said I was fine.”
Muchirahondo walked her home and tried to go inside with her, the woman told police.
“I said he couldn’t cos my mum was home. He left, I went inside and locked the door. I called the police.”
She told police she spoke to Muchirahondo “briefly” during the night.
“It was basic conversation… I hadn’t discussed anything like [having sex] with him. I barely talked to him,” she said.
Footage was shown to the jury of the woman kissing and dancing with Muchirahondo at a bar.
She said she did not remember that and when a friend told her about it her reaction was: “That’s disgusting.”
She said she was “very drunk - like, blackout… coming in and out”. But she was adamant that she had woken to Muchirahondo raping her.
The trial continues.
Anna Leask is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 18 years with a particular focus on family violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz
The locations have been revealed.