Rapists suspected of spiking drinks for 10 years

The Mama Hooch rapists were part of a ‘‘Rat Pack-like group’’, and there were concerns they spiked drinks for a decade before they were caught drugging and sexually assaulting patrons of the now infamous bar.

A woman who knew Danny and Roberto Jaz and worked in bars in Christchurch’s central city in the mid2000s says she and her colleagues warned women to watch their drinks around the brothers. She said she watched young women who were socialising with the pair quickly become very intoxicated.

Some had to be carried out of a bar where she worked. ‘‘It never made any sense how after one or two drinks they were so incoherent.’’ There was speculation at the time that the Jaz brothers were involved in drink-spiking but noone could prove it, the woman told The Press. She also heard stories of women who found themselves in cars or toilets having sex with either of the men, with little or no recollection of how they got there. When the woman learned the Jaz brothers had been convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting numerous patrons of Mama Hooch recently she was not surprised.

‘‘I am just sickened by how long they were able to get away with it and how brave the women who came forward were. I am convinced this happened to other girls long before they [the Jazs] were caught. They just treated women like toilet paper.’’

Back when the woman knew the Jaz

‘‘They are creeps from years back.’’

Woman who knew Jaz brothers

brothers, they were aged in their 20s, and worked at their family’s central city Italian restaurant, Portofino.

They were good-looking, charming, charismatic and seemed well-connected – able to skip queues and access free drinks in bars because of friendships with bouncers and venue managers, the woman said.

Their close circle of friends, which she described as being ‘‘Rat Pack-like’’, included several eastern European men, one of whom was said to be the son of a senior mafia figure, and who seemed to

have regular access to drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine.

‘‘All the girls wanted to party with them. ‘‘Everyone wanted to be friends with them.’’ But with the popularity came a sense of entitlement, she said. ‘‘They [acted like they] were better than everyone else. They just thought they were untouchable.

‘‘The boys were always talking about having girls throw themselves at them and how many girls they’d had sex with.

‘‘I think . . . the power got to them. ‘‘They were treating girls like garbage. ‘‘They were using the most foul, degrading terms to describe them.’’

A man who was mates with the Jazs recalled consuming a drink Danny Jaz had got for a female friend on a night out in Christchurch in about 2009. Within half an hour he was in the toilets vomiting.

‘‘I remember waking up and I was curled up in a ball beside the toilet. It made me think what would have happened to my friend if she got the drink.’’ Years later, he believes the drink he had was spiked.

‘‘I am absolutely horrified that I knew these men’’.

Another woman who knew the Jaz brothers during the same period said they were ‘‘absolutely disgusting’’ from the moment she met them.

She said the brothers and their inner circle made a point of befriending young women and would always use ‘‘really sick sexual talk’’.

Her ex-partner became friends with the Jazs while working at Portofino. ‘‘He completely changed after becoming close to them . . . It broke down our relationship’’.

When the woman first read about the Mama Hooch case in 2018, she knew exactly who the accused would be, she told The Press. ‘‘They are creeps from years back.’’

During the major investigation into the Jaz brothers’ Mama Hooch-linked offending, police identified dozens of women who believed their drinks had been spiked on nights out at the bar from early 2015 to late 2018. Some of them had been sexually assaulted.

It now appears there were many more victims of the Jaz brothers.

Since news of their crimes were made public, The Press has learned of a raft of other suspected drink spikings at Mama Hooch which were not reported to police.

One woman has described a near-miss with Danny Jaz. Another said she was sexually violated by him in the bar’s toilet but did not come forward because she felt ashamed and embarrassed, and did not want to put her family through the ordeal of a court process. ‘‘Police are supporting these people and assessing the information they have provided,’’ Detective Inspector Scott Anderson said.

At the conclusion of a two-month trial earlier this year, the Jaz brothers were each convicted of dozens of crimes, including rape, sexual violation, sexual assaults and various druggings.

Danny Jaz, 40, a father of two, attacked 15 women, many of whom he followed into the toilets at Mama Hooch late at night, where he forced himself upon them.

Roberto, 38, sexually assaulted five women – filming one of them while he raped her at the Venuti restaurant.

The pair will be sentenced in August.

It is understood the Jaz brothers’ father travelled to Australia in 2020 and has not returned. Neither he nor any of the wider family have commented publicly about the case.