Jury deadlocks on 22 child sex abuse charges, acquits Taiawa Harawira on three others

The historical child sexual abuse trial for Taiawa Harawira - a member of one of New Zealand’s most prominent Māori activist families who spent over a decade working with West Auckland youths through his Christian non-profit organisation - has been partially derailed after four days of mostly unfruitful jury deliberations.

Jurors in the Auckland District Court acquitted the 67-year-old of three charges late this afternoon but were deadlocked on 22 other charges.

“It’s been a real marathon for you,” Judge Mary Beth Sharp told the group as she thanked them for their service, adding that she understood the difficult job of evaluating evidence that is so old.

The case will be called again in April, at which point prosecutors will have an opportunity to say if they will pursue a retrial on the remaining 22 charges.

Harawira’s trial started late last month with 44 total counts involving allegations of indecency with a girl under 12, threatening to kill, injuring with intent to injure and rape, but 19 were dismissed before deliberations began due to lack of evidence.

Harawira is the brother of former MP Hone Harawira and a son of Titewhai Harawira, a social justice icon and Waitangi staple who helped plan some of the major Māori rights protests and hīkoi in the 1970s and 80s. Titewhai Harawira’s death last year at age 90 prompted tributes from longtime activists and some of the nation’s most prominent politicians.

It was against the backdrop of the busy protest movement of the late 70s and early 80s, when the defendant was in his early 20s, that his accuser said he found opportunities to groom and repeatedly rape her when she was between the ages of 8 and 12. Some of the sexual abuse is alleged to have happened at homes in Avondale, Auckland, and Whangārei, Northland - gathering spots where activists strategised together and children from multiple families were looked after by designated adults.

The defendant, his accuser said, was one of those adults who would sometimes be recruited to watch the children. Taiawa Harawira denied he ever took on such a role, and also denied allegations that he would lift children up by their necks in what started out as rough play before allegedly evolving into the sexual abuse.

The accuser, now in her 50s, also said Taiawa Harawira abused her at several marae in Northland and Auckland, but those were among the charges that were dismissed mid-trial.

She said she made an outcry to her mother when she was a teenager but didn’t have the courage to go to the police until 2019. The defendant was arrested in 2020, after an hours-long police interview - later played for jurors - in which the woman was prompted to give graphic descriptions of each alleged incident.

Taiawa Harawira stands outside Whakapara Marae near Whangārei in January 2011. He's now on trial in the Auckland District Court, accused of child sexual abuse more than 40 years ago. Photo / NZME

In the police interviews and in the witness box, the woman said Taiawa Harawira would sometimes bribe her with lollies and often threaten to kill her mother or victimise her little sister if she didn’t comply with his demands.

“I know what happened,” the woman replied under cross-examination when her testimony was challenged by the defence. “. . . I remember the weight of him [on top of her], the smell of his breath - all of those things.”

During their opening and closing addresses for the trial, prosecutors Robin McCoubrey and Jessica Ah Koy pointed to what they characterised as two telling admissions from the defendant. During his arrest, he told a detective: “I know what this is about. I’ve been waiting for 30 years for this.” Then there was an incident roughly 30 years ago, according the complainant’s sister, in which she said Harawira showed up at her doorstep - years, she said, after she had caught him in the act of raping her sister.

“He said, ‘I’m a reborn again Christian and I’ve come to ask for your forgiveness,” she testified. “I said, ‘I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to my sister. Maybe you should go and ask her.’ I shut the door and that was the end of that.”

Testifying immediately after the sister, Taiawa Harawira described her recollections as “bizarre” and false. He did find religion, but that is something that would have been well-known in the community, his lawyer pointed out.

Taiawa Harawira described his life in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a blur in which he worked multiple jobs, renovated his first house and raised his first of what would eventually be 11 children. He didn’t have time to go to the gathering spots where the woman said she was abused and wouldn’t have been asked to watch over other people’s children, he insisted.

He and his wife would years later start Ezekiel 33 Trust - a Christian non-profit intended to provide a gathering spot and events for young people in their community.

During the defence’s closing address, lawyers Ron Mansfield, KC, and James Olsen suggested the accuser made up the allegation - choosing their client at random because she didn’t like his arrogant, over-publicised family - in an attempt to change the subject and make her mother feel bad amidst a heated argument when she was a teenager. Once the false allegation was laid and people responded with sympathy and support, she had painted herself into a corner of sorts and had to maintain the lie in the decades that followed, the defence suggested.

Mansfield pointed to numerous inconsistent details in the woman’s testimony, as well as inconsistencies with testimony from her mother and her sister. It would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a conviction on such shaky ground, he argued.

But prosecutors lambasted the defence theory about a 40-year attempt to cover up a teenage lie as ludicrous, as well as another defence theory that she lodged a police complaint hoping for an ACC payout.

They acknowledged the inconsistencies - some of which led to the dismissed charges - but argued it was to be expected considering the passage of time and the age of the complainant when the abuse occurred. It would be more worrying, McCoubrey offered, if the family members’ testimony was perfectly in sync without any variations in memory.

“Sometimes we do get details wrong - it doesn’t mean we forget the fundamental things that happen to us,” McCoubrey said, adding that it just doesn’t make sense the complainant would have conspired with her mother and her estranged sister to concoct an “orchestrated litany of lies”.

The simple, more believable answer, he argued, is that the women were telling the truth.

“She’s actually done pretty well in remembering the core elements of what happened at Mr Harawira’s hands,” McCoubrey added. “Because they happened.”

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.