Having your home broken into is bad enough. But one Rotorua family is disgusted after discovering what they believe is evidence burglars had done more than rummage through their drawers and drink their booze.
Evidence suggesting burglars had sex in the master bedroom of a Rotorua family's home has left the owners devastated and disgusted.
The Kawaha Point Rd family, who don't want to be identified, stayed overnight at their in-laws on Saturday. While they were away, their home was broken into.
When one family member returned home on Sunday morning to get some clothes, he discovered the house had been ransacked.
He rang his wife and told her all the drawers - as well as some windows, doors and cupboards - were open.
His wife told the Rotorua Daily Post they noticed all the linen on their master bed had been removed and their duvet pushed down. There was an empty bottle of Appleton Estate rum they believed was from their liquor cupboard sitting on the bedside table.
Later that day they discovered the mattress protector, two pillowcases and their fitted sheet rolled into a ball and tossed over the back cliff behind their house, which leads down to Lake Rotorua.
"They probably thought in the dark it was going to end up in the lake but it just landed on all the shrubs."
The woman said on closer inspection of the linen, it appeared to be stained with semen.
"We rang police back again and told them what we had found and they said to put it in a cardboard box because plastic bags can destroy DNA evidence. My husband picked it up and put it in the box. He was gagging."
She said coping with a burglary was bad enough without the knowledge strangers appeared to have done something sexual in their bedroom.
"It's just disgusting. It means the activity upstairs with the bed has obviously been used for their pleasure and they have dumped the evidence over the cliff. I can totally get a break-in but someone coming in when you're not here and not even being scared of being caught, casually drinking a full bottle of liquor and making use of the facilities and then leaving.
"I just can't believe in this day and age there is someone out there who can do that in someone's home. It's just so disrespectful."
Among the stolen items were her husband's clothes, several bottles of alcohol, tools and their two-year-old daughter's Bugaboo runner pram with a pink hood - which the thieves possibly used to cart everything away.
"Everything else can be replaced but I really want the pram back. She's had it since she was a baby and it's more sentimental to me."
Rotorua police crime prevention manager Inspector Brendon Keenan said scene of crime officers had visited the home and started an investigation by collecting evidence.
"These specialists can collect forensic evidence from a variety of sources. It is too early to confirm the results of the forensic collection from this particular burglary."
Keenan said preventing and catching offenders who committed burglaries was a priority.
"Burglary is an invasion of a person's private space, a space where they have the right to feel safe and be safe so this type of dishonesty offending will be a priority for police alongside disrupting organised crime, as often burglary-type offending is often to fuel organised crime, and gang and drug offending."
If you know who the burglars are or if you've seen the missing Bugaboo pram, please contact police on 0800 CRIMESTOPPERS or (07) 348 0099.
