The man who abducted, wounded and assaulted a 23-year-old woman at a West Auckland quarry was also found guilty of raping a second woman.

And neither attacks were his first time before the courts for a sex crime, it can now be revealed.

Colin Jack Mitchell was yesterday found guilty of six charges relating to the two separate attacks - the first at Riverhead in February last year and the second at Avondale in 1992.

However strict suppression orders meant the Herald could only report on the charges relating to the Riverhead quarry attack.

Mitchell, who turned 60 yesterday, has been on trial in the High Court at Auckland.

A jury of four men and eight women heard details of the Riverhead attack, including that a glove containing Mitchell's DNA was found at the crime scene.

Identical DNA was taken from a rape victim in 1992.

Her crime had never been solved and when she saw Mitchell in the news following his arrest last year she recognised him as the man who attacked her 25 years ago.

Another section of the trial that was suppressed until today was 'propensity evidence' presented to the jury about another rape Mitchell committed in 1985.

He was jailed for five years for the attack on a 26-year-old prostitute.

A clipping from the Herald in 1985 when Mitchell was jailed for rape.

 

Mitchell was jailed for five years after he raped a 26-year-old sex worker.

Usually, a jury does not hear details of a defendant's criminal history.

However that tends to show a person's propensity to act in a particular way or to have a particular state of mind, is sometimes allowed.

The Crown told the jury that the three attacks were significant in their similarities - from where Mitchell took his victims, to what he said during the violations and how he reacted when the women refused to comply with his disgusting demands.

"All three offences happened in early hours morning all three victims were young women unknown to Mitchell," Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis said in court.

"They were taken to secluded spots, told to take off their clothes, (two were) raped.

"All were threatened.

"That demonstrates that Mitchell has a tendency to treat young women who have been out on the streets at night in a particular way."

The 1984 rape

Mitchell gave evidence for his own defence on Monday. He acknowledged that he was convicted of rape in 1985 in relation to an incident the previous year, but maintained his innocence on the more recent charges.

"I was stupid in 1984, I've learnt my lesson," he told the jury.

"I was trying to go straight."

Mitchell claimed police got the wrong person and he was not the man responsible for the Riverhead attack.

He further claimed that he had met the 1992 victim in a bar and had consensual sex with her - but he did not rape her.

"It was definitely not consensual, most definitely not," the victim told the court during her evidence last week.

She said she had been at a gig at the Glue Pot bar in Ponsonby and was walking home to Kelston when a man offered her a ride.

She accepted it and he drove her to Avondale.

Soon after she got out of the car she was grabbed off the street, dragged behind a factory and sexually assaulted.

Her rapist, now known to be Mitchell, drove off and left her lying "trussed up" with her own pantyhose in the dark.

She admitted lying to police at the time about the driver of the car she got into, telling them it was a female.

But she did not lie about being raped.

"I lied to police because I was incredibly uncomfortable, being made to feel like I was an incredibly stupid girl… they weren't very nice, they were treating me like I was a criminal, like I was the person to blame," she said.

Defence lawyer Mark Ryan accused the woman of lying about the whole attack.

He put to her that she made up the rape complaint because she was angry her sexual partner had driven off and left her at Avondale and she, effectively, wanted a ride home from police.

Mitchell will be sentenced on May 18 and the Crown has indicated it will seek preventive detention - an indefinite term of imprisonment.