Mum allegedly sexually assaulted while walking 3-year-old to Pakuranga daycare, calls for caution

• A mother was allegedly sexually assaulted while walking her preschooler to daycare in East Auckland.
• Multiple people intervened, allowing the mother to escape and seek help.
• Police are speaking to a person of interest and investigating the incident on Reeves Rd.

WARNING: This story deals with sexual offending and may be distressing.

A mother said she was sexually assaulted while walking her 3-year-old to daycare on a busy East Auckland street this morning.

The woman, who wished to stay anonymous, told the Herald she was walking along “one of Pakuranga’s busiest roads,” Reeves Rd, about 9.55am with her child when a man suddenly grabbed and touched her.

She said she could see a man coming towards her, “I looked down and was walking with my 3-year-old to daycare, which isn’t too far from where we were.” She said it is around a three-minute walk.

“As he got closer, I could hear him saying, ‘Could I give you a massage?’”

The mother said she looked up confused, and alleged “he grabbed my face and started saying, ‘Can I give you a massage’, repeatedly.”

She said he “started touching my shoulders, then my breast, then from my breast to my arm, sort of shoving me away from my child ... I was gripping my 3-year-old pretty hard just so that he wasn’t able to separate us.

“I don’t know what to do in the moment except for freeze,” she said.

The mother said her child had been very scared and she could hear him “saying, Mummy, mummy, mummy”.

A mother said she was sexually assaulted while walking her small son to daycare on a busy street in East Auckland this morning. Photo / 123RF

While this was happening, a member of the public who was driving by stopped in the middle of the road and asked her if she knew the man, the mother said.

“I’m so thankful for that because if he didn’t do that, I think he [the alleged attacker] would have actually possibly separated me from my child and shoved me to God knows where.”

The mother said the driver who pulled over started yelling at the man assaulting her and called the police, and that is when she was able to get away.

The mother said another woman also pulled over and asked if she was okay.

She said the man who assaulted her did not run away from the scene.

“He actually stood there still saying something, but I was just so focused on getting away from him, you know, I was just with my child.”

The mother said it was “pretty terrifying as I was crossing, I could see that he was still looking back at me. He walked down Cardiff Rd and started looking back at me, smirking.

“Just the whole smirk on the face terrified me.”

She said she feared he would try to come back for her, so “I quickly sort of ran back home, you know, and just making sure he wasn’t following me or anything.”

The mother said she called the police and made a statement.

Since posting to her local community Facebook page, the woman said, she has been contacted by multiple women with similar experiences.

She said she is concerned because there is a primary school and a daycare very close by in the Pakuranga area, so she urged caution to her community.

Police said they were speaking to a person of interest following a reported incident on Reeves Rd in Pakuranga this morning.

“This is in the very early stages, and police are making inquiries to understand the full circumstances of what has taken place,” police said in a statement.

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