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Offender Databases Michael Blake

Michael James Blake

Alias

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Offences

Rape and indecent assault of a young girl in Mahia between July 1981 and April 1982

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1955

Current Location

unknown

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to six years six months in May 2007
Eligible for parole June 2009

Background
NZ Herald story here
From a Stuff article April 2007
A woman accused of creating dreamlike memories of being raped by a Mahia man 25 years ago found the justice she was seeking when a High Court jury in Gisborne found the man guilty on two historic charges. The jury deliberated for almost three hours before finding Hastings man Michael James Blake, 52, guilty on one charge each of raping and indecently assaulting the complainant, then aged 12 and 13. He was remanded in custody to Hastings for sentence during the week starting May 21. The jury was told Blake raped the complainant no fewer than 10 times, but no more than 15 to 20 times, between July 1, 1981 and April 30, 1983 at two different locations at Mahia. The majority of occasions were when the complainant slept over at Blake's house after babysitting for him.

The court heard Blake waited for his wife to go to sleep, then woke up the complainant by placing his penis in her mouth. He would lead her to the porch of a neighbouring bach where he would perform oral sex on her before they had sex. She did not resist at the time and did not take the matter to the police until many years later. During closing submissions, defence counsel Eric Forster accused the complainant, now aged 37, of constructing memories of the rape. Children often built memories and the fact that the complainant had had a troubled childhood before she met the accused made her particularly inclined to do so. Just because the complainant believed that the rapes happened, did not actually make them true, he said. Mr Forster suggested that parts of her testimony had "dreamlike" qualities to them, in particular the rape that was alleged to have occurred in the Blue Bay pine forest.

The accused apparently beckoned her into the forest, past the safety of a garage where her father worked, to where he had laid out bedding. "Doesn't that in itself have some sort of fantasy to it?" he said. Neither the complainant, nor anyone else in the house, ever once heard Blake making preparations before the rapes. Changes between what she told a depositions hearing and what she told the jury were also reason enough to create a reasonable doubt that his client did not do it. In closing the case for the Crown, prosecutor Russell Collins told the jury that in this case either the accused or the complainant was not telling the truth because their stories of what happened differed so much. The complainant said Blake raped her, while Blake said he never had sex with her. Therefore, it came down to the honesty and reliability of the complainant, since it was up to the Crown to prove that it happened, not for the accused to prove that it did not happen. "If you accept that she was an honest witness then the Crown has won the case," he said.

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Corrections and Additional Information
We endeavour to make this database as accurate as possible, but we are at the mercy of whatever information we can find in various online and offline archives. We rely on the public - that is, people like you - to fill in the gaps that we cannot. If you wish to submit additional information or a correction to this file CLICK HERE . Privacy: Trust policy is that all sources are treated as strictly confidential unless we are explicitly told otherwise. If you wish to see a file removed from this database certain conditions must be met by the offender set out HERE Note that this does NOT apply for those that are the primary offender in a murder, rape, or any sexual offending involving minors. We do not enter into correspondence regarding the guilt/innocence of offenders. Such correspondence is not responded to, especially if the offender concerned has a number of prior convictions

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