Man jailed after woman tricked into rape

A Waikato man has been jailed for three years and eight months for helping execute a plan in which a woman was tricked into being raped.

Plasterer Shane Menzies, 23, was yesterday sentenced at the High Court at Hamilton after earlier pleading guilty to one charge of rape and one of blackmail, the Waikato Times reported.

Menzies is the co-accused of David Allan Malone, 26, last year sentenced to 15 years' jail.

Malone masterminded a plan in which vulnerable young women were made to think they were the targets of underworld figures, then raped.

Justice Rhys Harrison said Menzies could have prevented one of those rapes, but did not.

The court was told that on June 20 2008, Malone sent a text to a woman living in Papamoa, a suburb of Tauranga, telling her the Mongrel Mob was holding a male friend of her's captive.

The text said she would have to have sex with Malone in order to save her friend.

Five days later the woman drove to a Hamilton house which Malone and Menzies shared, where she was told by Menzies she should comply with Malone's demands for her own and her friend's safety.

In the end the woman had sex with Malone.

"You had the power to save her," Justice Harrison said. "But you did not. Instead you turned the switch on."

Justice Harrison said Menzies' attempts earlier yesterday to vacate his guilty plea indicated that he lacked insight into his offending and attempted to diminish his role.

The blackmail charge related to a separate incident where Menzies dressed up as a Black Power member and physically threatened the woman's friend into giving Malone money.

- NZPA