A man has been given possibly the longest prison sentence ever imposed in a Hawke's Bay court despite his continued denial of abusing and eventually raping his young daughter.
Already with a history of offences against his nieces, the man was sentenced to 15 years in jail, with a minimumterm of 10 years, when he appeared in the High Court in Napier.
Suppressing the man's name to try to avoid any further harm to the daughter, aged 6 to 11 years at the time of the offence and now aged about 20, the Justice Raynor Asher declined a Crown application for preventive detention.
There was no history of offending in the more recent years when the man had been undergoing some corrective programmes, the judge said, but he also noted that in denying his daughter's claims the man was not accepting the underlying causes of his behaviour and therefore limited the prospects of treatment.
The woman told a jury about two months ago that she was about 6 when her father began indecently assaulting her.
He took advantage of opportunities when the two were sleeping in the same house and he raped her when she was about 11, shining a light into her eyes to ask why she was crying.
The jury rejected his pleas of not guilty to one charge of rape and four others of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, one representing repeated offending during a time when the girl and two siblings were in the man's care for a year.
The judge said the victim acted with maturity trying to put the events behind her, but would suffer the memories for the rest of her life, in addition to the physical pain she endured at the time.
