\u2018Put her seat in the recline position\u2019<\/p>\n
On February 11, 2023, the victim booked an Uber from the Speight\u2019s Ale House to a Hamilton East house to meet up with friends.<\/p>\n
There was initially some confusion about the pick-up point, and Singh initially went to the drop-off point before heading to the pub.<\/p>\n
In what should have been a trip that took a matter of minutes, Singh instead turned off his GPS as he neared the destination and drove her to Peachgrove Rd.<\/p>\n
Judge Clark found that his sexual interest in the victim was \u201cpiqued\u201d immediately after asking the victim if she was wearing any underwear after her dress rode up her legs.<\/p>\n
He then began touching and rubbing her thigh, despite the victim telling him, \u201cno, can you not?\u201d, and later, \u201cget off me\u201d.<\/p>\n
He then made the \u201cdeliberate decision\u201d to turn off the GPS, which gave the impression that his trip had been successfully completed. <\/p>\n
However, his vehicle was spotted by cameras travelling toward Peachgrove Rd.<\/p>\n
It was then that he locked the car doors, reached over and put the woman\u2019s seat in the recline position, before kissing her and touching her breasts.<\/p>\n
He then climbed on top of her and raped her, which the victim described as \u201cvery rough and very hurtful\u201d.<\/p>\n
He then dropped her off at her friend\u2019s house in a \u201cdistressed state\u201d. She immediately called police.<\/p>\n
Judge Clark rejected Singh\u2019s defence submissions at trial that the sexual activity was either consensual, didn\u2019t happen at all, or that he had rejected her advances.<\/p>\n
\u2018She has an overwhelming rage inside of her\u2019<\/p>\n
The rape had a \u201csignificant\u201d impact on the victim, the judge said.<\/p>\n
In her victim impact statement, the victim recalled that on the night, she was excited to be leaving the pub and meeting up with friends.<\/p>\n
Her friends were also excited and were waiting out on the street for her to turn up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a life-changing event,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
A blurred image of Satwinder Singh in the dock of the Hamilton District Court this morning. Photo \/ Belinda Feek<\/p>\n
\u201cThe victim should now be poised to leave home, attend university, and instead, what I have read about is that she simply cannot do so because this event has made her feel like a completely different person.\u201d<\/p>\n
She now lives with her parents and doesn\u2019t like leaving their property for too long, and the outside world now \u201cfeels unsafe and threatening\u201d.<\/p>\n
Being under the male gaze also makes her feel exposed and angry, while she has an \u201coverwhelming rage inside of her\u201d, which was only exacerbated by the trial process.<\/p>\n
The judge felt that by defending the charges at trial, Singh was \u201ctrying to lie his way out of it\u201d, which had only added to the hurt that he\u2019d already caused.<\/p>\n
\u2018Prison would place an undue hardship on him\u2019<\/p>\n
Baier pushed for a hardship discount, saying that he would find jail harder as he was a Sikh Indian who had only lived in the country for 11 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe, as you will see, is a follower of the Sikh religion, so prison would place a hardship on him as opposed to someone who was born and raised in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had also largely resided in a local Indian community.<\/p>\n
However, the judge wasn\u2019t convinced, citing the fact he was an Uber driver in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
If dispensation was granted, anyone who had English as a second language would then ask \u201cfor some sort of special credit\u201d.<\/p>\n
Baier said she couldn\u2019t push her argument any further other than to say prison would be \u201cdisproportionately severe on him\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s an expectation Uber drivers are vetted\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Clark struggled to grasp the defence position, asking her to give discounts for his background factors, and yet still denying doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n
However, she did, to some extent, accept Singh\u2019s upbringing \u201cmay well have created in him a level of distorted thinking about how New Zealand women behave\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is, of course, no criticism of the victim, but perhaps how he behaves towards women … and that can be traced back to his unfortunate upbringing.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the victim had been drinking, she was entitled to be taken safely to her friend\u2019s house. <\/p>\n
Judge Clark found several aggravating features, including a breach of trust, given he was an Uber driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure what the vetting is for an Uber driver … but there\u2019s an expectation on behalf of customers and the general public that drivers of such vehicles are people that you are safe with.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd clearly, on this occasion, [the victim] was not safe from Mr Singh.\u201d<\/p>\n
After taking an eight-year jail starting point, she allowed discounts totalling 10% for his previous good character and his upbringing.<\/p>\n
She jailed Singh for seven years and two months.<\/p>\n
As for his photo, Judge Clark said she was currently inclined to grant media permission to print it, given he didn\u2019t have name suppression and those who knew him likely already knew about his offending.<\/p>\n
However, she agreed to give Baier extra time to file the affidavit from the family member, and suppressed his image in the meantime.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His defence counsel, Nadine Baier, accepted she had no grounds to oppose name suppression. However, she did successfully,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[192,5767,108192,19552,2082,19134,42,14641,43,69,1118,14734,108191,34458,51246,108190,312,22498,5163,40,38,41,39,7489,9880,79227,2248,80],"class_list":["post-165597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-are","tag-convicted","tag-distorted","tag-driver","tag-for","tag-forward","tag-headlines","tag-jailed","tag-news","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-passenger","tag-promiscuous","tag-rape","tag-raping","tag-satwinder","tag-says","tag-singh","tag-teen","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uber","tag-view","tag-whom","tag-women","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}