“She could smell smoke. You can imagine the panic she was feeling.”
Pineaha had spent the previous three hours brutalising the woman, whom he knew, after breaking into her Central Hawke’s Bay house late in the evening of October 23 last year.
Wearing gloves, he held a sharp object - thought to be garden secateurs found in her room - against her neck, tied her up, bent her body backwards, punched her repeatedly and sexually assaulted her.
Among his last words to her before he left, he said: “I can’t let you go because you’ll nark, and I’m not spending the rest of my life in jail.”
He then went into the room next door, set a fire and left the house.
Luckily for the woman, the fire went out and she was able to struggle free from the bandages Pineaha had used to bind her.
When police arrived, she still had bandages around her neck, wrists and ankles.
At one point during her ordeal, Pineaha wrapped bandages around the woman’s head and pulled them from behind, pulling her neck backwards until her back was arched.
The woman said the pain was “like nothing I’ve felt in my body before”.
When she tried to break free, he chased her and pushed her, causing her to fall against the protruding corner of a wall. She hit her head on the floor and was knocked unconscious.
When she came to, he said, “Get the f*** up. You’re being a drama queen.”
When she asked him, “George, why are you doing this?”, he became angrier, pushing her down and pinning her into the carpet with his knee.
He punched the woman multiple times, including to the head and face, leaving her bleeding heavily.
She suffered multiple broken ribs, blood clots, swelling and bruising, and abrasions and lacerations over much of her body. An earring was ripped out and a large clump of her hair had been cut off.
Glue had been rubbed into her hair.
Pineaha pleaded guilty to a raft of offences including burglary, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, impeding breathing and arson.
Crown prosecutor Megan Mitchell called the violence “one of the most serious cases of its kind”.
The physical and emotional impact on the victim had been “utterly devastating”, she said. The woman had spent six days in hospital.
Mitchell said Pineaha had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 1997, but was a “recidivist” abuser with an appalling history of violence towards women, and he’d had decades to address his issues.
“The primary driver of this offending is the defendant’s choice to consume methamphetamine.”
Defence counsel Matthew Phelps said Pineaha had underlying mental health issues and used alcohol and drugs as coping strategies.
He was remorseful for his conduct and “absolutely mortified” that he had treated the woman in this way.
Judge Earwaker said the case’s summary of facts made for “absolutely appalling reading” and the woman’s victim impact statement was “harrowing”.
He listed aggravating features - the planning and premeditation, the home invasion, the gloves, secateurs and bandages, and the “horrendous level of violence”, which went on for hours.
He noted Pineaha had told a probation officer preparing a pre-sentence report he would take everything back “in a heartbeat” if he could.
“The tragedy is, you can’t,” Judge Earwaker said.
He imposed a prison sentence of eight years and six months, with a non-parole period of four years and three months.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
