A former Hawke's Bay paramedic who sexually attacked patients while working as an ambulance officer has lost an appeal against a prison sentence that will keep him locked up until at least mid-2022.
Christopher Roger King, now 49, was sentenced in the Napier District Court last December to 14-and-a-half years' jail, with a minimum of eight years before he can apply for parole.
His appeal against the sentence was heard by a Court of Appeal bench of Justices Harrison, Dobson and Gilbert in Wellington on September 21. The judgment was delivered by Justice Harrison yesterday.
King had been sentenced on 13 charges relating to what the court said were two "distinct" periods of sexual offending - eight charges relating to incidents in the back of ambulances from 2010 to 2013, which he had denied.
The other five charges came from unrelated offences against two girls between 2002 and 2006, which he had admitted after the other jury verdicts against him late last year.
There were six victims, ranging in age from 11 to 56 years at the time offences against them began.
The judgment said: "He shows minimal remorse and insight. A minimum sentence which is designed to protect the public was inevitable, and one which was just over half the term of imprisonment cannot be criticised."
The judges dismissed the appeal.
Counsel and Hastings barrister Bill Calver submitted on King's behalf that Judge Geoff Rea, who this year marked 20 years as a district court judge, had not given sufficient credit to the ambulance officer's previous good character in determining an end sentence after starting his calculation from a sentence of 16 years.
The only deduction made by Judge Rea was 18 months, recognising the five guilty pleas.
None of the offences came to police notice until late 2013, after a 15-year-old girl said the ambulance officer violated her in the back of the ambulance as she emerged from a comatose state induced by gas he had administered.
She sought help from a member of the public as she fled from the ambulance when it stopped at a medical centre. It was later found that King had almost simultaneously deleted from his cellphone images he had recorded of her.
A police investigation also revealed that King molested women in the back of ambulances as they were being driven by other officers who were oblivious to the offences in the compartments behind them.
The youngest victim had complained to her mother in 2003, but her story was dismissed, and the family of a terminally ill young woman victim were reluctant to take the matter to police because of their pre-existing friendship with King and his own family.
"Mr King's conduct then, and in later denying any offending, imposed particular stress and trauma upon (the young woman) in her final years of life," the appeal judges said.
They said Judge Rea had been faced with a "complex sentencing problem" in that there were "two distinct time spans", and "two distinct groups of vulnerable girls and women". The judges knew of no other case where a single offender had "committed total breaches of trust in both the employment and family environments".
The appeal judges supported Judge Rea's decision that on the principle of "totality" the starting point should be 16 years.
The eventual term was imposed on the most serious charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, concurrent with sentences of five years for each charge of indecent assault, three years for each charge of stupefying, and one for making an intimate visual recording.
Mr Calver had argued a 10 years starting point for the "lead offence" against the 15-year-old was excessive, submitting the offences fell more into the "opportunistic category" rather than being "premeditated," that there were no weapons or other violence, and no victim had suffered pain during the offences.
While the St John Ambulance Service was not a direct victim, the judges said: "The damage done to its reputation by the serial breaches of trust by one of its officers who sexually molested vulnerable female patients in his care cannot be underestimated."