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Source: Reuters
A teenager fears she has been stalked after being indecently assaulted as she slept next to her boyfriend in her unlocked flat in the Porirua suburb of Whitby.
"It was weird to know someone was watching me. Do they know me? Do I know them? What were their intentions?"
The 17-year-old supermarket checkout operator was startled awake in the Leeward Dr flat when she felt a man's hands under her blanket and on her hips at about 5am on Sunday.
"I saw the glow of someone's skin and I could tell he was white."
When she heard the sliding door to the house opening - just after 5am - she thought it was her flatmate arriving home late from the sevens rugby tournament in Wellington at the weekend.
About 20 minutes later she heard another noise but dozed off again. Two minutes later, the man's hands were on her.
"I shrieked out and said 'Someone's in the room'. I freaked out and he ran off in an awful hurry."
She thought the man "must have been kneeling next to the bed" but, although nothing was taken, she suspects he may have been looking around the flat for the 20 minutes before the attack.
Her boyfriend woke up as the man fled through the house and left the property in a car.
She suspected her attacker knew the door was unlocked. She also had a "feeling" she may have been stalked and may have been watched or targeted as she walked home from work in the afternoons.
The teen is now staying with her brother and looking for a new flat. She said her boyfriend was upset by the incident and had been supportive.
"I'll definitely be on my guard now but I'll be all right. You don't expect that kind of thing to happen in Whitby - I thought it was safe to sleep with my door unlocked."
Detective Shane Carter of Porirua CIB said police were looking for a European man.
Although the incident appeared to be random and isolated, he said stalking was "a definite possibility and it's an avenue we'll be investigating".
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