However, a jury found otherwise at a trial last year. Now Pascua has been sent to prison.
Reading a statement via audio-visual link at his sentencing this week, his victim described the effect his offending had on her.
“To say it ruined my life might sound dramatic to you, but to me, it feels like a gross understatement.
“I have felt the effects of this in every aspect of my life and will continue to be affected by it for as long as I live.”
During the rape, she said her “mind left my physical body”.
“I tried to imagine I was anywhere other than in that bed with him on top of me.”
Soon after she developed a cannabis dependency to help her sleep and escape the trauma of what she had been through.
“It gave me a couple of hours of peace when I could escape what happened to me and not be a prisoner in my own body and mind.”
She also became so depressed that being “able to live to see the following day was an achievement”.
‘She said no’
Pascua and the women had been at an event.
The victim did not usually have more than one drink, but the court heard she had taken up the offer of accommodation that night so decided to indulge a little.
Pascua liked the victim and stayed close to her throughout the night, buying her drinks.
At the end of the evening, the victim found a room that had two single beds in it.
She slept in one but when Pascua went to bed, he jumped in with the victim.
Despite her repeated protestations of him initially trying to kiss, cuddle, and touch her, Pascua then raped her.
“She said ‘No’ but he ignored that,” Judge Arthur Tompkins said in summarising the case during Pascua’s sentencing on one charge of rape in the Hamilton District Court on Monday.
“She told him she didn’t like him like that, she did not want to kiss him, and repeatedly, throughout the rape, said ‘No’.
“Despite that, the defendant raped her ... for approximately 10 minutes.”
‘Simply opportunistic’
Pascua’s counsel, Glen Prentice, accepted the offending had a “profound impact” on the woman and although his client maintained his innocence, he accepted the jury’s verdict.
Prentice urged Judge Tompkins to consider a previous good character discount for his client, submitting that drink-driving convictions, which occurred pre-2020 and again in 2022, bore no similarity to his rape conviction.
But Judge Tompkins was not so sure.
Prentice said it was clear Pascua “has done something extremely foolish”.
“It was a social setting, he plainly had feelings for her, but they were rebuffed leading up to this incident.
“It’s not pre-meditated, it’s simply opportunistic.”
However, Judge Tompkins interjected and said the evidence established Pascua “focussed in on the victim as the evening progressed”.
“The defendant set out to achieve what he, in the end, achieved.”
Prentice said his client was chatting with her, Judge Tompkins said he was “plying her with drinks”.
But Prentice did not accept that and said they were “both drinking and enjoying the night”.
“It does not mean at that point that he had some sort of plan to rape her.
“Everybody went to bed and that was the only bedroom available.”
Prentice asked the judge to still issue a discount for previous good character, despite his client’s previous drink-driving convicitons.
“If there was a discount it wouldn’t be too much,” he said.
As both crown solicitor Ashley Penney and Prentice agreed on a six-year start point, Judge Tompkins just had to decide on whether to issue any discount for previous good character.
However, as all of Pascua’s convictions involved alcohol he declined.
“The common factor between [convictions] is Mr Pascua’s abuse of alcohol.
“As part of the context of this offending, I do not consider that any discount for previous good character is available.”
Pascua was jailed for six years.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.
