Rimutaka Prison escapee guilty of rape, assault with a weapon and abduction, name suppression lapses for Damon John Exley

Damon John Exley in the High Court at Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and may be distressing.

A prison escapee has been found guilty of raping a woman who offered him a ride in her car.

Damon John Exley was today found guilty in the High Court at Wellington this afternoon of abduction for the purpose of sexual connection, assault with a weapon and sexual violation by rape.

His name suppression also lapsed today and he will reappear in court on October 13 for sentencing.

Exley has been convicted twice for similar offending, once in 2000 and again in 2005. On those occasions, he had abducted female real estate agents and threatened them with an air rifle and a steak knife respectively.

In February last year, Exley was hitchhiking near Ōtaki after escaping Rimutaka Prison two days earlier.

His victim, whose name is automatically suppressed, pulled up alongside him and invited him into her car.

The pair chatted briefly, but when she went to drop him off he pulled a large knife from his backpack and revealed he was not who the woman thought he was.

Exley threatened her with the knife, saying he had gutted things before, and there was “no harm in doing it again”. He told her he was going to have sex with her, and that she needed to take him to Hunterville.

The victim said Exley told her to turn off the road. When she asked if she could just drop him off he told her again to pull off the road and she drove to a nearby cemetery.

They then drove through to Masterton and stopped at a laundromat to dry the man’s rain-soaked clothing. Here, the victim gathered the courage to tell someone in the laundromat what was happening, and they called the police who arrested the man shortly after.

Vita Molyneux is a Wellington-based journalist who covers breaking news and stories from the capital. She has been a journalist since 2018 and joined the Herald in 2021.