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Offender Databases Mark Garraway

Mark Garraway

Alias

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Offences

Unlawful sexual connection with a 16 year old girl Tauranga girl in January 2007

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1963

Current Location

Corrections facility on remand

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 4 years in January 2009

Background
Bay of Plenty Times story here and also here
From the Dominion Post 17/05/2007
A 44-year-old man charged with unlawful sexual connection after police found him in a parked car with a 16-year-old girl was found guilty late last night. Mark Garraway, a welder, had been on trial in Tauranga District Court before Judge Peter Rollo and a jury of eight men and four women. The jury retired early in the evening and took more than five hours to reach a verdict. Garraway will be sentenced on June 13. The trial started last week but struck a hitch when the accused sacked his defence lawyer, Bill Nabney, before the prosecution's case had finished. This week he represented himself with the assistance of a court-appointed legal adviser, duty solicitor Glenn Dixon. Garraway was arrested in mid-January when two police officers on a routine Sunday morning patrol checked a car parked under a tree behind Tauranga's Fraser Cove shopping centre.

They rescued a crying teenage girl who was inside the vehicle with the accused. The complainant told the court she was "totally grossed out" when she woke up about 6am after a night out in Hamilton to find Garraway "whom she had known only for three days" sexually assaulting her. Shortly after she had protested, and the accused stopped and apologised, the patrol car arrived. She insisted the sexual activity was not consensual, but Garraway claimed it was. The teenager, who had a 30-year-old boyfriend, told police she was one month pregnant at the time. In evidence, she said she had tried not to be alone with the accused because he was "sleazy." She had fallen asleep in the car on the journey home and woke to find the passenger seat reclined, her clothing disarrayed and Garraway touching her intimately. When the complainant was recalled for cross-examination by the accused after he took over his own defence, she was screened from his view.

In a taped interview with police, Garraway said he had only met the girl and her boyfriend a few days earlier. She and another teenage girl the accused knew went to Hamilton the day before the Fraser Cove incident to visit a strip bar owned by Garraway's brother. The trio had smoked some P and had a few drinks each during the evening. Returning to Tauranga in the early hours of the morning, Garraway dropped the other girl at her home before parking at the back of the nearby shopping complex. He told a police constable that the behaviour toward him of the complainant "whom he thought was 18" led him to believe she was "up for it." However, he pulled back and apologised when she "freaked out." In his summing up, Judge Rollo told jury members they must put to one side any distaste they might feel about the facts or the people involved in the trial. It was not about "the morality of a 44-year-old man trying to have a relationship with a 16-year-old girl". The onus was on the crown to prove the charge. It was not up to Garraway to prove the girl was consenting.

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Corrections and Additional Information
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