• Taiawa Harawira was found guilty of historical child sexual abuse after a retrial in Auckland District Court.
• The jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on six charges, acquitting him of three others.
• Sentencing is set for next month by Judge Eddie Paul.

A member of one of New Zealand’s most prominent Māori activist families has been found guilty of historical child sexual abuse following a two-week retrial in Auckland District Court.

Taiawa Harawira - the brother of former MP Hone Harawira and son of prominent Māori activist and social justice icon Titewhai Harawira - faced off with his accuser again this week, leaving the second set of jurors to again weigh vastly different accounts of what occurred between the two in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

His accuser, now in her 50s, said he found opportunities to groom and repeatedly rape her when she was between the ages of 8 and 12, targeting her at homes in Whangārei, Northland, and Avondale, Auckland.

Harawira’s lawyers, meanwhile, suggested the accusations were a complete fabrication - first blurted out by the accuser during an argument with her mum when she was young, intended to deflect attention from her teenage misbehaviour. Over the years, that spur-of-the-moment lie spun out of control and eventually became an official police complaint as part of a scheme to get ACC to pay for psychological help, it was argued.

“I know what this is about,” it is agreed Harawira, now 68, said when police came to arrest him in 2020. “I’ve been waiting for 30 years for this.”

Taiawa Harawira stands outside Whakapara Marae near Whangārei in January 2011. He currently on trial in Auckland District Court, accused of child sexual abuse over 40 years ago. Photo / Malcolm Pullman

Prosecutors said it was an admission of guilt, while the defence said it was a reference to years of false allegations and feuding between his and the accuser’s families.

Crown prosecutor Jessica Ah Koy began Harawira’s last trial in January last year by outlining in graphic detail 44 different charges: 30 alleged incidents of indecency with a child, four of threatening to kill, six allegations of injuring with intent to injure and four counts of rape.

Nineteen charges were dropped mid-trial due to lack of evidence. Of the 25 remaining, the first jury acquitted Harawira of three but remained deadlocked on the other 22 after four days of deliberations.

This time, prosecutors presented a further streamlined set of charges: seven counts of indecency with a child under 12, one count of threatening kill and two counts of rape. One of indecency with a child charges was dropped mid-trial after the complainant couldn’t remember if counts one and three happened on separate nights, as indicated in the charges, or on the same evening.

The seven women, five man jury for the second trial began deliberating yesterday afternoon. They acquitted him this afternoon of two counts of indecent assault and one count of threatening to kill. Unanimous guilty verdicts were returned for the six other charges.

In addition to his political activism, Harawira spent over a decade working with West Auckland youths through his Christian non-profit organisation.

His mother Titewhai Harawira was a Waitangi staple who helped plan some of the major Māori rights protests and hīkoi in the 1970s and 80s. Her death in 2023 at age 90 prompted tributes from longtime activists and some of the nation’s most prominent politicians.

It was against the backdrop of the busy protest movement of the late 70s and early 80 that Taiawa Harawira’s accuser said he found opportunities to groom and repeatedly rape her at gathering spots where activists strategised together and children from multiple families were looked after by designated adults.

Taiawa Harawira shares a hongi with former National Party leader Don Brash after Brash gave a speech in Silverdale in 2015. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The defendant, his accuser said, was one of those adults who would sometimes be recruited to watch the children. Taiawa Harawira denied he ever took on such a role, and also denied allegations that he would lift children up by their necks in what started out as rough play before allegedly evolving into the sexual abuse.

In the police interviews and during both trials, the woman said Taiawa Harawira would sometimes bribe her with lollies and often threaten to kill her mother or victimise her little sister if she didn’t comply with his demands.

“I know what happened,” the woman replied under cross-examination last year when her testimony was challenged by the defence. “. . . I remember the weight of him [on top of her], the smell of his breath - all of those things.”

She said she made an outcry to her mother when she was a teenager but didn’t have the courage to go to the police until 2019.

Taiawa Harawira, brother of MP Hone Harawira, rings a bell to summon participants into a Te Tai Tokerau Electorate Committee meeting on the Whakapara Maraei, north of Hikurangi, on January 27, 2011. Photo / Malcolm Pullman / NZPA

The accuser’s estranged sister also twice gave evidence at trial, recalling an incident roughly 30 years ago in which she said Harawira showed up at her doorstep years after she had caught him in the act of raping her sister.

“He said, ‘I’m a reborn again Christian and I’ve come to ask for your forgiveness,” she testified. “I said, ‘I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to my sister. Maybe you should go and ask her.’ I shut the door and that was the end of that.”

Taiawa Harawira described his life in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a blur in which he worked multiple jobs, renovated his first house and raised his first of what would eventually be 11 children. He didn’t have time to go to the gathering spots where the woman said she was abused and wouldn’t have been asked to watch over other people‘s children, he insisted.

He and his wife, Justice of the Peace Stephanie Harawira, would years later start Ezekiel 33 Trust - a Christian non-profit that was initially intended to provide a gathering spot and events for young people in their community. The endeavour expanded over the years to include a food bank, budgeting advice, church services and counselling, resulting at one point in back-to-back New Zealander of the Year nominations for his wife. Their faith was again front-and-centre in 2020, when Stephanie Harawira ran for Parliament as co-leader of the then-newly established One Party, which focused unabashedly on Christian values.

Taiawa Harawira reacts to a photographer alongside then-MP Phil Goff at the New Zealander of the Year Awards in 2011. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

Through his years of working in the community and helping out with family members’ political campaigns and activism, his social circles seemed to expand even beyond the activists who he joined as a young man on the tail end of the 1975 land march and during the occupation of Bastion Point.

But the child molestation accusation, first brought to his attention by his mother in 1985, would hang over his head for decades as he was frequently confronted and threatened, he said.

During his closing address earlier this week, defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC focused intently on the differences between the accuser’s initial written statement, her two recorded police interviews and her trips to the witness box in both trials.

“When you are the victim of real life trauma like this ... you don’t forget,” he said, noting that the written statement the woman gave police didn’t mention the first and last alleged incidents. “You need to look with real care at the evidence you have been presented with.

“...As judges, you can’t just wholeheartedly accept something because it’s been said.”

He described the Crown’s case as “absolutely cluttered with emotion and prejudice” and urged jurors to “weave your way through it and actually look at the evidence”.

Prosecutor Robin McCoubrey countered that some details were bound to get confused after so many decades, but he emphasised that the important details were remembered clearly.

“It’s simply nonsense to say ... ‘You’re confused on the detail, therefore it didn’t happen,’” he said. “She never budged from that essential truth that Taiawa Harawira did these things to her.”

Judge Eddie Paul set a sentencing date for next month.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.