All the charges related to a single event in September 2024, at a Hastings house where both Taiaroa and the girl were visitors. He found the 14-year-old and another girl drinking alcohol in a shed. He deliberately blew cannabis smoke in her face and later gave her some cannabis and told her to smoke it. “She began shaking with fear and froze,” a Crown summary of facts said. When she woke up, she told an adult woman in the house what had happened, and the woman confronted Taiaroa.

Source: New Zealand Herald February 26, 2026 09:02 UTC