Danny and Roberto Jazz during sentencing in Christchurch District Court on 24 August 2023 for 69 charges, including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault, and stupefying. Photo: NZ Herald / George Heard
Two brothers jailed for drink spiking and sexual assaults at Christchurch bar Mama Hooch are appealing against their convictions and sentence.
Judge Paul Mabey KC last month sentenced 38-year-old Roberto Jaz to 17 years behind bars for offending against eight women.
His older brother, 40-year-old Danny Jaz, was jailed for 16-and-a-half years.
Both men were ordered to serve a minimum of half of their sentences before they are eligible for parole.
The appeal was filed at the High Court at Christchurch on Thursday morning.
In a judge-alone trial earlier this year, the Jaz brothers were convicted of 69 charges relating to 23 victims, mostly women aged 18 to 24, ranging from rape, assault and sexual violation to making an intimate visual recording, drugging, drink spiking and stupefying.
Judge Mabey's sentencing in August followed tearful victim impact statements to the court.
It was greeted with clapping from the packed public gallery.
The judge said the survivors had suffered shame, embarrassment, and overwhelming self-blame.
He told the Jaz brothers they should be in no doubt that they had severely damaged all of their victims.
Nine survivors read powerful victim impact statements to the court ahead of sentencing, the first of whom was drugged and indecently assaulted by Danny Jaz.
She said the attack had completely rewired her brain.
"Danny you have damaged me. My outlook on life is skewed because of what you thought you were entitled to with my body and my choices," she said.
The woman said she left Christchurch not long after the assault for fear of running into Danny Jaz.
"My inability to trust new people enough to accept them as a friend, or even an acquaintance, particularly with men, is something I will carry for life," she said.
Another survivor choked back tears in court, saying she was still struggling to process what happened to her in 2018.
"The offending against me has changed me. I struggle with anxiety and depression still. I am fearful and vigilant in social settings, and I am constantly having flashbacks which set my anxiety and emotions off," she said.
Sophie Brown, who waived her name suppression, told the court she was left to pick up the fragments of her life after she was drugged and sexually violated in 2017.
"You stole my fierce independence from me. You stole my right to feel safe in my own mind from me, and you stole my right to autonomy over my own body away from me. For those things I'll never forgive you," she said.
"I am still a confident, tenacious, and strong-willed woman, who will continue to rise miles above you, because I deserve a happy and meaningful life, the opposite of what you deserve."
