party<\/a> in Auckland that moved from a house to a nearby park.<\/p>\nHis first victim wandered off to drink from a water fountain and Rhodes followed.<\/p>\n
When the young woman leaned over to drink, the tall and heavily built Rhodes came up behind her, reached up her dress and put his hand in her underwear.<\/p>\n
She tried to push him away but, because of his imposing stature, she was unable to.<\/p>\n
He continued to touch her for about 10 seconds before she was able to get away.<\/p>\n
Rhodes was at another party when he offended against his second victim, who was 18 at the time.<\/p>\n
He and the girl were sitting in a bedroom with some others when Rhodes began rubbing her back and slid his hand down into her pants.<\/p>\n
He touched her for about five seconds before he was called out by another party-goer.<\/p>\n
Later that year, he was out socialising in Auckland and his third victim, who had been drinking, was sitting on his knee.<\/p>\n
In the middle of the party, which included the victim\u2019s boyfriend, he unhooked her bra, pulled down the straps of her top and grazed her breast.<\/p>\n
He was again challenged by several other party-goers and the victim moved off his knee.<\/p>\n
Violation<\/p>\n
Ten years later, Rhodes was having sex with the fourth victim.<\/p>\n
After engaging in consensual sex, the victim said she no longer wanted to engage in anal penetration.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Rhodes continued to ask if he could penetrate her this way and the victim repeatedly said no, recording many of these interactions.<\/p>\n
Up to five times while they were having sex, Rhodes digitally penetrated her,even though she told him she did not want it.<\/p>\n
Later, while driving together, the victim needed to use the bathroom.<\/p>\n
Rhodes pulled over on a main highway and told her to go on the side of the road. <\/p>\n
Reluctantly, she squatted down behind the car door and relieved herself.<\/p>\n
While she did this, Rhodes filmed her on his cellphone and masturbated.<\/p>\n
Groping, masturbating and staring intently<\/p>\n
In 2024, Rhodes was drinking with his fifth victim, and others, at a pub.<\/p>\n
Just before midnight, Rhodes, the victim and her friend drove back to the victim\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
In the car, Rhodes touched the woman\u2019s knee before attempting to run his hand up her leg into her underwear.<\/p>\n
She moved his hand away and told him to stop.<\/p>\n
Rhodes kept touching her on her shoulders and legs while the woman and her friend repeatedly removed his hands from her body.<\/p>\n
Arriving at the victim\u2019s home after midnight, the friend went to bed and the woman set up the couch for Rhodes to sleep on.<\/p>\n
Fearing Rhodes would attempt to have sex with her, the victim stayed up with him in the lounge waiting for her partner to get home.<\/p>\n
This was when Rhodes took off his clothes and started masturbating while staring intently at the victim.<\/p>\n
She moved away and Rhodes sat up so he could maintain eye contact with the victim and continued masturbating.<\/p>\n
As she tried to move further away, Rhodes got up and rubbed her head with his hands. She pushed Rhodes into a nearby bathroom and shut the door.<\/p>\n
Her partner came home and took her away from the house.<\/p>\n
She later told police she felt so disgusted she showered and washed her hair multiple times.<\/p>\n
The impact of indecent assault and a long, drawn-out court process<\/p>\n
Some of the impact statements of Rhodes\u2019 victims were read out in court by a victim support person.<\/p>\n
His first victim <\/p>\n
had to sleep facing the door to protect herself from \u201cthe unknown\u201d.<\/p>\n
She also stopped wearing dresses as she was wearing one when Rhodes indecently assaulted her.<\/p>\n
Her mental health was impacted significantly by what Rhodes did to her, leading to suicidal thoughts, and she was still triggered with \u201cunfiltered rage\u201d 10 years later.<\/p>\n
Rhodes\u2019 second victim was in shock about what had happened to her, embarrassed and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
She suffered in having to tell the police what had happened and the long, drawn-out court process that forced her to relive her trauma.<\/p>\n
The third victim said that, after the indecent assault, she was \u201cblamed and shamed\u201d by her boyfriend at the time, which almost destroyed her.<\/p>\n
She was drunk, couldn\u2019t remember and had to be told in the police station what had happened to her.<\/p>\n
Not \u2019untouchable\u2019 nor above the law<\/p>\n
The three women waited almost three years for their case to go to trial, a process the third victim said \u201cdragged on\u201d, giving her anxiety, worry and trepidation.<\/p>\n
The victim believed Rhodes pleaded guilty not because he was sorry, but because there were so many witnesses to what he had done.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope you understand you are not as untouchable and above the rules as you think,\u201d her statement said.<\/p>\n
The impact statement of the victim Rhodes violated was not read out in court.<\/p>\n
Rhodes\u2019 fifth victim said she still had mental \u201creactions\u201d when encountering a man of his stature and struggled to trust people in general since his offending.<\/p>\n
\u2018His own ends\u2019<\/p>\n
At his sentencing in the North Shore District Court in May, Crown lawyer Robin McCoubrey said Rhodes paid no attention to the boundaries of the victim he violated.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Rhodes was] someone who was going to do what he wanted, no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCoubrey told the court there was a certain callousness in Rhodes\u2019 violation.<\/p>\n
\u201c[He] knew it was something [she] didn\u2019t want to do and did it for his own ends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police prosecutor Helen Brown said Rhodes\u2019 indecent assaults showed a \u201clack of regard\u201d for any of the women around him.<\/p>\n
Rhodes\u2019 lawyer, Petrina Stokes, said her client was very remorseful for his actions and was aware he would most likely be receiving a term of imprisonment.<\/p>\n
He had made an emotional harm repayment to his victims before sentencing.<\/p>\n
Judge Maria Pecotic said in the case of the victim he violated, she did not believe he had a \u201cmistaken belief\u201d of consent.<\/p>\n
The victim \u201crepeatedly\u201d and \u201cunequivocally\u201d said she did not want or consent to penetration, the judge found.<\/p>\n
She noted the victim Rhodes violated had felt the emotional, physical and social impact of his offending and the court process.<\/p>\n
Rhodes\u2019 background<\/p>\n
A Corrections background report showed that Rhodes\u2019 parents had split up when he was 3 and he was raised by his mother and grandmother in state housing.<\/p>\n
He had worked for the past seven years as a heavy machine operator and drank heavily after work and on weekends.<\/p>\n
In the report, Rhodes said he had difficulty remembering his 2015 offending because of his drinking.<\/p>\n
A psychological assessment from 2024 noted he began speaking at the age of 5 and experienced learning difficulties, including dyslexia.<\/p>\n
The assessment noted Rhodes had difficulty expressing his thoughts and feelings and his family suspected he suffered from other developmental conditions.<\/p>\n
For four charges of indecent assault and one of sexual violation, the intimate recording and indecent act, Rhodes was sentenced to three years and five months in prison.<\/p>\n
He was ordered to pay $5000 to the violation victim and an additional $1000 to each of his other four victims.<\/p>\n
Teaching consent<\/p>\n
The case has similarities to others in recent years when young men have sexually assaulted young women, often girls they met at parties or knew socially and where alcohol was involved.<\/p>\n
The Government\u2019s chief victims\u2019 adviser, Ruth Money<\/a>, said Rhodes\u2019 repeated, escalated offending is the reason why children needed to be taught about consent, especially by their parents.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat are parents teaching? What are [they] modelling in their whare?\u201d she told NZME.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is dad modelling for his teenage son, for example, or is he not?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is on everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Money said police and the legal system ccould not tackle this issue alone, and she is always challenging her parent friends on what they were teaching their children.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, she said, consent in New Zealnd law was defined in the negative, only outlining what did not count as consent.<\/p>\n
This was the wrong definition, and the law should be focused on a more nuanced idea, with positive affirmations and continued consent throughout periods of intimacy as an example.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot, \u2018Oh, well, we did it six months ago\u2019,\u201d she offered.<\/p>\n
Parents, not teachers, were the ones who needed to educate their children on the issue, so they would not be learning what consent meant from inside the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t have children if you\u2019re not going to be prepared to educate them on this kind of stuff,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s based in Auckland, covering justice-related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A month and a half later, a jury found him guilty of violating and secretly filming a fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9526,17704,51247,51,15118,4058,181,1866,2082,3011,22500,51669,14641,5158,111,43,139,69,249353,17703,544,427,1361,1961,96,50638,64011,1455,2248],"class_list":["post-498839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-another","tag-assault","tag-assaulting","tag-auckland","tag-connor","tag-contains","tag-details","tag-find","tag-for","tag-four","tag-indecent","tag-indecently","tag-jailed","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rhodes","tag-sexual","tag-some","tag-story","tag-that","tag-this","tag-upsetting","tag-violating","tag-violation","tag-warning","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498839","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=498839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}