Woman "raped on 18th birthday’

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 5

Woman "raped on 18th birthday’

PA Whangarei A young woman was allegedly raped in Whangarei on Saturday as she returned from a city nightclub on her eighteenth birthday, the police said. Detective Lee Andrews, of the Whangarei C. 1.8., said the young woman had been walking home along Rust Avenue about 2.30 a.m. when she was approached by a man outside the Bank of New Zealand who asked for a light. She lit the man’s cigarette and walked another two or three paces when she was grabbed from behind, physically lifted off the ground, carried into a service lane nearby and raped, Detective Andrews said. Her attacker then ran down a second service lane by the Rust Avenue rail overbridge. The young woman was discovered, as her attacker fled, by a security guard who took her home, Detective Andrews said. In Northland on Saturday evening a 22-year-old Whangarei woman was punched and kicked about the face and body in an apparently unprovoked attack as she walked home from the Kamo Hotel, the police said. Sergeant John Rae said the Kamo Road attack continued for some time before two people intervened about 9.45 p.m.

The woman did not require medical treatment. One man had been spoken to by the police