A teenager has killed herself two years after being raped by a serial sex-offender.
The 17-year-old victim's family said that, before her suicide in December, she had expressed anger that her attacker, Fanuaea Leatigaga, went on to sexually assault three more women while on bail for her rape.
Leatigaga was released on bail on January 17, 2006, two weeks after he raped the then 15-year-old, and went on to sexually assault three other women, including raping a 21-year-old pregnant woman at knifepoint.
Samoan immigrant Leatigaga was jailed for 11 years in October 2006 on multiple sex charges.
Leatigaga persuaded the girl to get into his car outside Eastgate Mall in Christchurch, took her to Lyttelton and raped her.
Her father said his daughter went from a "happy-go-lucky" girl to having mood swings and harming herself after the rape.
"I had to lock all the knives in my car. She wouldn't talk about it. She wouldn't go to counselling," he told The Press.
"I talked to her about suicide and she said she would never do it. Her friend had done that and she said it had left a big hole in her life and she would never take her own life."
He said the girl had seemed OK after completing a tourism and hospitality course in Australia but it was not until after her death, he found letters, poems and school essays, that revealed his daughter's true state of mind, and her anger at the justice system.
He said his daughter had been devastated other attacks were not prevented because Letatigaga had been released.
"She got quite upset when he got granted bail and asked why.
"It makes me really angry. I am very angry with the judge for letting this guy out on bail.
"If he hadn't been on bail, nothing would have happened to the rest. She could not figure out why he was out."
An Independent Police Conduct Authority report in December highlighted a "catalogue of errors" by police in the case, showing how they had failed to act on key information from one of Leatigaga's earlier victims.
- NZPA
