What shaped the Mama Hooch monsters?

Saturday, 27 May 2023

EDITORIAL: As in the disturbing stories about kidnappers who join the search for children they have abducted, Mama Hooch bar manager Danny Jaz​ told the media five years ago that if he ever found out who was drugging and sexually assaulting women in his Christchurch bar, he would “break their hands and hand them over to the police”.

As we learned this week, it was Jaz himself, together with his brother Roberto, who were responsible for dozens of crimes against women, including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault and drink-spiking at the bar and a nearby restaurant, Venuti.

Both hospitality businesses were owned by their family.

Danny Jaz was convicted of attacking 15 women between 2015 and 2018 and Roberto was convicted of sexually assaulting five women, including one he filmed as he raped her. They boasted about and planned their exploits on a private message group shared with others.

Danny Jaz’s deception and dishonesty when talking about the crimes might seem relatively minor compared to the assaults against young women in their venues, but it points to a chilling degree of callousness.

That Jaz went on to attack five more women after he was first interviewed by police adds to an impression of an offender who thought he was above the law, or felt he was simply too clever to be caught.

He even dared to make a pass at a policewoman who was investigating the venue.

There was a sense that he and his brother arrogantly used the bar as their personal hunting ground.

People have been shocked by some of the more brazen aspects of the Mama Hooch story, and by the scale of it, but not by the fact it occurred at all.

Women who have not been victims of sexual assault themselves will probably know of others who have been assaulted.

Such offending is widespread and often goes unreported.

It is hard to get a sense of how common drink-spiking is, given that the substances used to spike drinks are hard to detect by smell or taste, and may have left the system by the time a suspected case is reported.

But the problem is widespread, even global. The Massachusetts Senate has only just funded the distribution of drug-testing kits in bars, restaurants and other venues due to a rise in reports of drink-spiking in Boston.

Some bars and clubs, including in New Zealand, have developed a culture to combat drink-spiking. It involves sharing a code word that alerts bar staff.

Responsible bar managers and bartenders should keep an eye out for such situations.

That points to another tragic irony in the Mama Hooch case, in which the bar manager was himself a predator.

According to those who work with sexual assault victims, the removal of name suppression that protected Danny and Roberto Jaz is a positive development.

Sexual offenders benefit from secrecy. It gives them power.

For both men to be named, and photographed, diminishes them and helps to bring some closure to their victims. It may also inspire others to come forward.

The heroes of the Mama Hooch story were the young women who first went to the police and reported their crimes.

It is entirely understandable that many women choose not to report assaults, and they often have good reasons for not doing so, but reporting takes a remarkable level of courage and resilience, especially when it took eight years from the time of the first known offending for justice to finally be done.

Hopefully we will learn more about how these two brothers developed into the monsters they became, but there have been inklings.

One of Roberto’s former girlfriends told Stuff about a toxic, misogynistic culture that existed long before either man was understood to be offending.

She said “it will take serious de-programming for them to realise they’ve done wrong … They’ve had the last 40 years feeling entitled to a woman’s body and getting away with it”.

The level of offending may be unusual, but some of the attitudes described by Roberto’s ex-partner remain depressingly common.