A teen exchange student was indecently assaulted by her host father in the Bay of Plenty. Photo / Stock image
A teen exchange student was indecently assaulted by her host father in the Bay of Plenty. Photo / Stock image
Warning: This story deals with details of sexual assault and may be distressing.
When a teen overseas exchange student came to New Zealand, she was “full of hope and fun-filled excitement”.
But while staying with a host family in the Bay of Plenty, the man who should have been offeringher safety and hospitality in a foreign country, betrayed her trust, and that of her parents, by indecently assaulting her.
Napoleon Eketone had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent assault and, today, was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court.
She had been “hyperventilating” as she heard her daughter in distress, crying and clearly frightened.
The woman got on a flight to New Zealand “as soon as possible”, while her husband was back home and struggling to work as he was worried about what was happening.
“This incident made our life upside down,” the mother wrote.
“It made us all exhausted physically and mentally. I was not able to sleep for a while. Even if I did, I woke up suddenly, and my heart started racing.”
She questioned why the incident had happened, and said she still felt angry.
Her daughter had come to New Zealand “full of hope and fun-filled excitement”.
Judge Paul Geoghegan said the teen’s experience should have been a “great adventure for a young person”.
Her family had relied on a host family to provide her with security, protection, care, and hospitality.
Eketone had failed to do that, the judge said.
In sentencing him, he said it had been a “gross breach of trust”, and the victim had been “highly vulnerable” given her age, the fact she was from a different culture and a long way from home.
Eketone, at 34 years old, had no previous convictions and was generally “well regarded”. The judge said it was “most unfortunate” that Eketone had ended up before the court, having offended in this way.
However, he wasn’t given any discounts for personal factors but did get a 25% discount for his early guilty plea.
The judge adopted a starting point of 16 months’ imprisonment and, after applying the discount, arrived at an end sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment.
The judge commuted it to one of six months’ home detention, with six months post-detention conditions.
Lawyer Michael Douglas had sought a lesser sentence of community detention, arguing that Eketone’s employer might be more inclined to keep him on if that were the outcome.
The judge agreed it was desirable for Eketone to keep his job, particularly because of the impact on his family, and his ability to pay reparation.
The judge said he “hoped [Eketone’s] employers take that into account”, but said he could not impose a sentence of community detention.
It would not “accurately reflect the gravity” of the offending, and there must be some deterrence, particularly to anyone hosting a young person from overseas.
An order was made for $4877 reparation to be paid to the parents of the victim, to cover the last-minute travel costs incurred.
HannahBartlettis a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.
