Photos: Babiche Martens
As a 19-year-old university student and cheerleader with a booming social life, Sophie Brown felt on top of the world.
“I really did feel invincible,” she tells the Weekly.
But in 2017, her world came crashing down and changed the trajectory of her life dramatically when she was sexually assaulted by one of the now notorious Jaz brothers at Christchurch bar Mama Hooch.
Last year, former hospitality workers Danny and Roberto Jaz were convicted of 69 charges between them, including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault, stupefying, disabling, making intimate recordings of women without their knowledge or consent and supplying illicit drugs.
Sophie, now 26, was one of their victims – and the first to go to the police, which eventually sparked a lengthy investigation and led to them being convicted and sentenced last year.
The aftermath of the attack pushed her to the edge and Sophie will never be the same. But fiercely resilient, she knows she’ll never regret speaking out.
“The day I shared my victim impact statement in court, one of my dear friends came with me,” she tells. “Before I went in, she said to me, ‘You are your 25-year-old self doing this today for your 19-year-old self.’
“Suddenly, I could see myself as two separate people. I was protecting my younger self. It was a powerful shift for me to just be more confident when I was being cross-examined by the defence.”
Telling her story in court, she says was “a privilege” and soon after, she decided to take it a step further.
Victims of sexual assault in New Zealand have automatic name suppression to protect their identities. But Sophie successfully applied to have the suppression lifted so she could stand up and be seen as someone who fought back and won.
She did if for herself, to hopefully make the world a safer place for women like her younger sister Emily, 18, and for the other women who have suffered in silence in the wake of sexual crimes.
“I felt I’d gotten to a place where I could talk about it,” explains Sophie. She initially told her story to journalist, podcaster and close friend Katie Harris, 27.
“It was turning something really awful into something positive to hopefully help others. It just felt right.
“Now I know I can go through the wringer and I’ll come out the other side a stronger person.”
Therapy, she says, has also been key in her recovery.
“I’ve gone from having a lot of shame to feeling a certain type of resilience,” says Sophie. “I think you have to make a choice, and I say this with sensitivity, but when you’re going through something traumatic, the hardest thing is to make the choice to say, ‘I actually don’t want this to have this much power over me any more.’ Part of that is shifting the shame back to your abuser. It’s one of the biggest, most powerful mind shifts.”
Thinking back to that fateful night, Sophie explains in was a Friday evening in late 2017 when she arrived at Mama Hooch. She had spent the day partying with her cheerleading teammates, celebrating the end of the season. Canterbury bar Mama Hooch was a popular spot and a regular haunt for Sophie, who had met the manager Danny Jaz a number of times before.
She tells, “I met him through friends. He’d sometimes give me drinks.”
What she didn’t know was that Danny and Roberto, his brother and co-worker, were sexual predators preying on women at the bar.
“On that night, it was quite late when Danny said, ‘Oh, I’ll make you a drink.’ I remember it being weird because he went behind the bar and made me this drink specifically. Usually, he’d just call over one of the bartenders.
“After that, it’s just fragmented memories. At one point, Danny came up and was like, ‘Come with me.’ There was an empty shop next door and he took me there. Once I was inside, I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t right’, but I didn’t know what to do.
“I had always thought that if anyone tried to assault me, I would fight back. The most shocking thing for me was that I didn’t. I think it was the freeze stress response. My experience with men in the past has been that if you anger them, there can be strong repercussions. And also, I was drugged.”
Antihistamines and the powerful drug ketamine were later found in Sophie’s system during testing.
After the assault, a dazed Sophie returned to the bar to find her friends.
“One friend put me in a taxi and took me home,” she says. “He said I was just completely out of it.”
The next morning, clear memories of the previous night still eluded her.
“I’m just a push-on kind of person,” she reflects. “I had a dress fitting first thing, so I woke up, got dressed and drove there. When I got home, I was like, ‘Nah, something’s really not right.’
“I knew someone had done something to me and I slowly got those little inklings of what it could be. That feeling when you know something’s wrong, but you don’t know what it is, is just surreal.
“I spoke to my friend who had got me home and he said, ‘You were saying these things. You said that Danny raped you.’”
As memories trickled in, the confused and scared teen confided in friends who supported her to go to the police that same day.
“They did a rape kit. I went into autopilot. I was like, ‘I’ve just got to get it done.’”
The police, she says, were “absolutely amazing” but initially there wasn’t enough evidence to lay charges and the aftermath of the assault was an emotional rollercoaster. She drank a lot and oscillated between oversharing and closing herself down.
Then, the following year, her world shifted on its axis once again. Two more women laid complaints about being sexually attacked at Mama Hooch.
The police launched a major investigation and by the time Danny and Roberto were arrested, a raft of women had come forward with stories of being drugged and sexually assaulted at the bar.
During the trial, which began in February last year, Judge Paul Mabey heard how the brothers called each other “rapist” and joked about “roofies”, which is slang for date-rape drugs. They shared photos of women who both worked at and frequented the bar, and argued over who would have them.
In August last year, Roberto, 39, was given 17 years with a minimum non-parole period of eight-and-a-half years. Father-of-two Danny, 41, was given 16.5 years with a minimum non-parole period of eight years.
Earlier this year, police received three fresh complaints relating to historical cases of sexual assault by the brothers.
The pair are appealing both their sentences and convictions, with their appeal due to be heard at the High Court in Christchurch in October.
Sophie was initially the only victim to have waived her right to name suppression, but bonding with other victims since the trial has been healing. As witnesses for the prosecution, the women weren’t able to meet or communicate in any way beforehand.
Now, Sophie says, “Some of us have become close friends. At the sentencing, eight or nine of us did victim-impact statements. We went for drinks afterwards and ended up watching the case on the six o’clock news, just crying. It was a deeply emotional moment of being like, ‘Wow, we’ve all been through the same thing but never met until now.’ That felt pretty special.”
Since the trial, Sophie has also met her partner, Jimmy Barwell-Smith, 31, who she now flats with in Auckland together with Katie.
“Our first date was literally the week after I recorded the podcast with Katie,” she smiles.
“I don’t know how it came up, but I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to be in the news in a couple of weeks.’ He was like, ‘What for?’
“So all the cards were on the table from the start. With Jimmy, I just feel really secure. He only knows Sophie post all this, but we have an appreciation for each other and what we’ve both been through.”
Working as an account executive for a tech company, Sophie smiles widely talking about how excited she is for the future.
“I’m enjoying building a career in tech,” she enthuses. “I also want to see more of the world and there are some other higher goals.
“Together with some of the girls involved in the trial, we’re hoping to help more women. We want to break down the barriers to people reporting sex crimes. If there’s one thing our trial showed, it’s that if enough people come forward, something can actually be done about it.
“We also want to help people understand what the best course of action is when something like this happens to someone they know, because most people don’t know how to deal with it.”
Before her harrowing ordeal in 2017, Sophie felt bulletproof. Now the world is at her feet once again.
“I’ve had this vision for what I want in life,” she says. “And I’ve been determined not to let what happened that night at Mama Hooch derail me from being who I want to be.”
Help is here
Safe to Talk – 0800 044 334 or free text 4334 for help to do with sexual harm. Available 24/7 and staffed by trained counsellors.
In an emergency call 111.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
