'No justice. Disgusting': Friend of teenage girls who were raped leads protest

Wednesday, 7 September 2022

A friend of four girls who were raped when they were 15 is organising a “peaceful protest” against the sentence the offender received of nine months home detention, and said it was “disgusting” that there was “no justice”.

Spencer McNeil, 18, a Tauranga barber, said he felt compelled to speak out about the sentence, which he said was “an insult to these amazing girls, their families, friends and everyone who knows and loves them”.

“I’ve known all these girls over the years, and consider them like family,” he said.

“I just wanted them to know that they have support – that people have their backs and we think this sentence is so light it’s ridiculous. It’s insulting, when you can be sent to prison for poaching fish but not for raping women.”

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McNeil said he also knew the perpetrator, Jayden Meyer, 18, who was sentenced to nine months’ home detention in July for rape and sexual violation of five young female victims who were 15 at the time of the assaults, according to a report by NZME.

“At first he seemed an okay dude, but I didn’t know him well and just saw him at the same parties,” he said.

McNeil had been in court for Meyer’s prosecution, he said.

“In court, when I was speaking, I looked him in the eye and he started to cry,” said McNeil. “Afterwards, when I left court, his mother was speaking to me, saying she was a ‘lioness’ and would protect him. She opened her car door to make threats.”

The peaceful gathering will be at Mount Drury in Mount Maunganui at 4:30pm on Thursday, September 8, with a procession planned along the Mount’s main street.

McNeil said “I just felt I had to do something. You can get judged as a guy, so I hesitated at first, but then thought about what the girls have been through. And what girls go through and are afraid to speak out – because of things like this – this ridiculous sentence, so I thought, this is so wrong.”

The outrage over Meyer’s sentence of home detention comes just months after an Auckland case in April in which another teenage rapist was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention for raping and abusing girls and young women at parties.

Mia Edmonds, one of three survivors of those attacks who waived their statutory name suppression, described that sentence of home detention as a “slap in the face” for all survivors of sexual abuse.

“This sentence is going to teach other young men that it’s okay to rape and sexually assault women as long as you’re under 18,” she said.

This story has been amended