Sex monster who bashed, strangled and raped a woman before cutting her hair off because she wouldn’t be his girlfriend is jailed for life
- Eric Reihana Hepi, 41, must serve a minimum of 15 years and two months in jail
- In October 2018 he took a woman he just met to his house and held her captive
- She was bashed, raped, and her hair was cut off with a knife over three days
A psychopathic sex monster who repeatedly bashed, strangled and raped a woman over three days before cutting off her hair with a knife has been jailed for life.
Eric Reihana Hepi, 41, from Dunedin, New Zealand, was sentenced to an indefinite term of imprisonment with a minimum period of 15 years and two months at Dunedin High Court on Monday.
The victim, who had only met Hepi days before the October 22 2018 attack, had been ignoring his calls when he showed up at her home and coerced her to go with him to his Kaikorai Valley Road flat.
Eric Reihana Hepi, 41, coerced his victim back to his house where she was repeatedly bashed and raped over three days (stock image)
‘I now truly understand the meaning of the word terror,’ she told the court via video link, the Otago Daily Times reported.
‘I feel like I saw and I was in hell… I was certain I was going to die.’
Hepi asked her to stay the night but when she declined he blocked the exit, slammed her against a wall and strangled her until she urinated and passed out.
After she regained consciousness on the kitchen floor, he broke her phone and scolded her.
Each time she answered questions about why she wouldn’t date him he punched her, leaving her covered in bruises.
Over the next two nights, she was forced to commit degrading acts as he threatened to murder her then kill himself.
The woman tried to escape by jumping out of a window but he grabbed her before she could exit, pinned her to the ground, and raped her again.
The torment only ended when he left the house briefly and she locked him out then called emergency services.
At the time of the attack, Hepi was being GPS-monitored for previous sex offending under an extended supervision order.
Justice Robert Osborne called the defendant’s acts ‘utter selfishness and barbarity’.
‘If any woman had to imagine the worst sort of thing that could happen, the brutal and utterly degrading treatment you subjected [the victim] to for three days might well be it,’ the judge said.
Hepi has more than 60 convictions for sex and violence dating back to 1997.
In 1997 he was sentenced to seven years in prison for breaking into a girlfriend’s home and raping her and handed another four years and three months in 2012 for sexually abusing his partner’s two daughters.