A "manipulative predator" who took advantage of his position of power to sexually abuse two young women has been sentenced to 12 years in jail.
Steven Bruce Absolum, 38, was found guilty in July of kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 21-year-old woman during a job interview for Dial a Driver at his Mt Albert home on November 27, 2000.
He was also convicted of kidnapping, raping and abusing a 19-year-old woman who worked for the organisation in June last year.
Effectively, Absolum has been given a minimum non-parole period of seven years and four months.
Passing sentence in the High Court at Auckland last week Justice John Laurenson said Absolum had a degree of authority over the two vulnerable women first as a prospective employer and in the second instance as an employer.
The judge agreed with the submissions of Crown counsel Howard Lawry and Simon Mount that Absolum was a "dangerous and manipulative predator quite prepared to use violence to obtain his objectives".
Given the circumstances of the women, his offending was "particularly cruel".
The judge said Absolum had deliberately set out to seduce the job-seeker who had responded to an advertisement on the internet.
During the interview, Absolum - who claimed some expertise in spirituality - did a clairvoyancy reading for the woman. The session ended with the door being jammed closed and secured with a butter knife and Absolum fondling the woman.
In the second incident Absolum again jammed the door closed before performing oral sex on the employee and raping her.
The judge said that this complainant had received free board as part of her remuneration.
"She was very much under your control. She had no other home to which she and her child could go."
Absolum, represented by Rob Harrison, had claimed that both women consented, but the judge told him he was deluding only himself.
The Crown had been allowed to call evidence at trial of an earlier incident in July 1997 where a mother who had lost a child through infant sudden death syndrome had gone to see Absolum as a spiritual medium.
After gaining her confidence and then inappropriately discussing sexual activity Absolum indecently assaulted her twice.
Absolum received a six-month suspended sentence for that offending and a suspended sentence on charges of unlawful sexual connection with a girl between the ages of 12 and 16.
In November 1999 he was sentenced to six months periodic detention for indecently assaulting a woman over the age of 16.
Justice Laurenson said he considered that Absolum had been treated leniently in the past.
Job-interview rapist jailed for 12 years
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