NZME revealed<\/a> a judge sentenced him to nine months\u2019 home detention for the rape of four teens and the sexual violation of a fifth.<\/p>\nA psychologist, who saw Meyer 30 times during the prosecution of that case, found he had a medium risk of reoffending, and continued to minimise the effect of his crimes.<\/p>\n
Young people took to the streets in protest, and the publicity of the case led to the teen girl at the centre of this week\u2019s trial making a police report.<\/p>\n
![\"Outraged]()
Outraged Tauranga young people marched against the sentence of convicted rapist Jayden Meyer. Photo \/ Andrew Warner<\/p>\n
Teen girl was \u2018frozen\u2019 during sexual assault<\/p>\n
The defence argued this week that the teen was \u201cembarrassed\u201d about a consensual hook-up with Meyer after seeing the news, and wanted to \u201cdistance herself\u201d from it, given what others in her peer group were saying about him.<\/p>\n
However, the Crown pointed to the fact she\u2019d confided in one close friend in the weeks following the sexual assault, a year before Meyer\u2019s convictions were reported by the media.<\/p>\n
The events of the trial centred on what was described as a \u201ctypical teen night\u201d \u2013 chatting and listening to music played on a phone.<\/p>\n
Meyer\u2019s father, Desmond Meyer, gave evidence that he checked on the teens \u201csix or seven times\u201d throughout the evening, and they were instructed to keep the lights on and the bedroom door open.<\/p>\n
Despite this, he had not seen the light switch off towards the end of the night, nor kissing between Meyer and the girl, and between the other teens who were in the room with them.<\/p>\n
The victim described feeling \u201cfrozen\u201d while the assault occurred, and not knowing what to do. She said she\u2019d told Meyer \u201cno\u201d after he unbuttoned her jeans and violated her.<\/p>\n
She said she mumbled, \u201cI don\u2019t want this\u201d, but he responded, \u201cIt\u2019s okay\u201d. She described having her legs \u201cglued shut\u201d to signal sexual contact was not wanted.<\/p>\n
Lawyer Rachael Adams pointed to inconsistencies in the girl\u2019s evidence, and the fact that her best friend, who told the court she never left the room, didn\u2019t see anything other than kissing.<\/p>\n
The Crown said that wasn\u2019t surprising, given the friend had been preoccupied with kissing her own boyfriend that night, and wouldn\u2019t have had \u201ceyes on\u201d Meyer and the girl.<\/p>\n
In the weeks following the assault, the teen girl told that friend what happened.<\/p>\n
The Crown highlighted both this, and the girl\u2019s behaviour, observed by her mother, following the incident.<\/p>\n
She had been self-harming, had become withdrawn and \u201cnot herself\u201d, causing her mother to seek help from their GP.<\/p>\n
Tears as a guilty verdict is delivered<\/p>\n
Today the jury returned a majority guilty verdict after about five hours\u2019 deliberation.<\/p>\n
Meyer\u2019s mother, who supported him in court, sobbed into her hands after the verdict was delivered.<\/p>\n
During the trial, Meyer maintained his innocence, revealing that he denied not only the current offending, but also events with other young women that had led to his earlier convictions.<\/p>\n
Under cross-examination, he told the Crown prosecutor he suspected the teen girl had falsely accused him of violating her, because she\u2019d heard \u201cnasty things\u201d about him that \u201cweren\u2019t true\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Crown pressed him on this, putting to him that those \u201cnasty things\u201d related to matters for which he had convictions.<\/p>\n
He confirmed this, but said he maintained his innocence for those allegations, too.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Ian Murray asked him if he considered himself to be the \u201cbeacon of truth\u201d amid what Meyer claimed were false allegations from multiple women, including the current complainant.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Meyer replied.<\/p>\n
While the jury knew he had convictions for sexual offending, they did not know the exact charges, nor the facts or circumstances, and were warned not to make internet searches.<\/p>\n
Judge Paul Geoghegan also warned against using the fact of the convictions in their reasoning of his guilt \u2013 thinking that because he\u2019d committed sexual offences before, he must have done so this time.<\/p>\n
But the jury was permitted to consider the convictions when assessing the defendant\u2019s credibility, given his assertion that \u201cthe rumours weren\u2019t true\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Jayden]()
Jayden Meyer was sentenced to home detention for the rape of four 15-year-old girls and the sexual violation of another. Photo \/ Ethan Griffiths<\/p>\n
Earlier sentence deemed \u2018manifestly inadequate\u2019<\/p>\n
Meyer was first charged in 2021 after multiple police complaints by young women in the Bay of Plenty who alleged sexual violence across 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n
An investigation followed, resulting in 10 charges, including four of rape, four of sexual violation, and two of doing an indecent act.<\/p>\n
There were five young female victims, four of whom were raped and one who was sexually violated.<\/p>\n
All five victims were aged 15 at the time of the assaults \u2013 the same age as the victim in this week\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n
Meyer pleaded not guilty to all charges but was later found guilty.<\/p>\n
At his sentencing in April 2022, Crown prosecutor Anna Pollett and Meyer\u2019s lawyer submitted that a sentence of home detention would be most appropriate.<\/p>\n
That was despite the Crown accepting imprisonment would be the ordinary sentence for this sort of offending; \u201cand indeed one of many years\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Christopher Harding agreed, saying a sentence of imprisonment was typical for the level of offending Meyer had committed and was \u201cundoubtedly correct\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, he sentenced Meyer to home detention, saying he accepted a probation report and the submissions made by counsel.<\/p>\n
After publicity and protests about the sentence, the Crown appealed the sentence<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Protests]()
Protests over Jayden Meyer’s home detention sentence triggered a Crown appeal. File photo \/ Andrew Warner<\/p>\n
The High Court was scathing of how the case was handled, with Justice Sally Fitzgerald describing the sentence as being \u201cmanifestly inadequate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Despite that, she declined the appeal and said, \u201cin the unique circumstances of this case, the interests of justice are best served by declining the Crown\u2019s application\u201d.<\/p>\n
Justice Fitzgerald concluded the sentencing process \u201clacked transparency\u201d and said it undermined public confidence in the justice system.<\/p>\n
Meyer has now been remanded in custody before sentencing next year, in relation to the latest offending.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He was then released into his father\u2019s custody at 7.13pm. That same night, just before midnight, he sexually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13236,11424,6868,3368,15484,12517,64010,111,43,139,69,1118,17703,64011],"class_list":["post-83651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-15yearold","tag-finds","tag-girl","tag-guilty","tag-jayden","tag-jury","tag-meyer","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-sexual","tag-violation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83651","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=83651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}