WARNING: This story details sexual offending against children and may upset some readers.
When Thomas Raymond Morris Fisher was first interviewed by Auckland police in 2024 – after allegations emerged that he had repeatedly raped a young girl over the course of a decade, at one point also targeting her best friend – his denial was firm.
“I’d never do that ...” he insisted. “That is sick. That is sick, twisted.”
He and Judge Debra Bell might not have seen eye-to-eye on much, her having found him guilty of multiple sex abuse charges at the conclusion of a trial last year despite his ongoing claim of innocence.
But on that point, they were in agreement, she said in Auckland District Court recently, as the 40-year-old was handed an unusually long sentence of 19 years’ imprisonment.
“It was sick and twisted,” she said.
Fisher had abused the main victim when she was between the ages of 5 and 15 years old. Now an adult, she told authorities the rapes were so frequent she couldn’t say how many times.
At the start of the abuse, she was so young that Fisher tried to convince her it was normal, the judge noted.
“She knew it was bad and it hurt but didn’t really know what was happening,” she said, recalling the woman’s evidence at trial. “She said it hurt like nothing else.”
When the child told Fisher she didn’t want any part of what he was doing, he indicated it wasn’t up for debate.
“This is happening,” the victim recalled him telling her.
Some aspects of the case have been suppressed. Other details the Herald has chosen not to publish due to their graphic nature and to protect the identities of Fisher’s victims.
The defendant had hoped that he, too, could receive permanent suppression, arguing that it was necessary for his ongoing safety. He’s currently in segregation and lives in constant fear of other inmates finding out, the court was told.
But his victims were adamant that they wanted his name published to help protect the community. Judge Bell agreed with Crown prosecutor Jared Lowyim that unsubstantiated fear does not meet the high bar necessary to override the principle of open justice.
“In my view, the evidence here falls well short of the threshold,” she said.
Fisher faced up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the 11 representative charges of rape, indecent assault and unlawful sexual connection with the main victim. He was also found guilty of abusing her friend on a single occasion.
He was exposed in 2024 after the girl showed another friend journal entries in which she outlined the abuse. When confronted by police several months later, Fisher said he was mortified by what he said were false allegations.
But an analysis of his cellphone later uncovered Snapchat conversations in which he and other users engaged in role play regarding child sexual abuse. His Google search history also showed a graphic interest in child abuse.
Both victims said Fisher’s crimes have caused them to distrust other men in their lives.
The victim who was abused one time said revealing the incident to her family was one of the most difficult things she had ever done.
“He made me lie to people in order to hide what happened to me,” she said as she confronted him in court. “I didn’t know what would happen or what he would do if I spoke out ...
“He was manipulative and he preyed on me.”
In a written statement read aloud in court by the prosecutor, Fisher’s primary victim recounted having to take leave from work to attend the trial – then the stress of feeling it necessary to make up a story when co-workers asked, “How was your holiday? Was it amazing?”
“My childhood memories are horrible and I struggle to remember a single happy moment,” she said. “Flashbacks of my childhood will keep me awake and they continue to terrify me.
“I want the court to do anything it can to prevent him from hurting other girls in the future.”
In another statement to the court, Fisher’s ex-wife expressed her shame at having been unwittingly married to a paedophile.
“You must not blame yourselves. This is of no fault of yours,” Judge Bell later emphasised to the victims as she thanked them for their input.
Defence lawyer Jacqueline Rempe pointed out that her client had a very limited criminal history. She asked for a sentence starting point of 16 years for all of the charges before applying reductions for his prior good character, time spent on bail, for a report that showed he had previously been a heavy user of alcohol and for his troubled family background.
Fisher’s father had served a prison sentence for sexual abuse of another child when the defendant was young.
The Crown, however, pointed out that he still hadn’t accepted responsibility for what he had done. That factor contributed to an assessment in which he was deemed a high risk of reoffending and a high risk of causing harm to females under 16.
Judge Bell ordered an 18-year starting point for the abuse of the primary victim and added two years for the second victim.
“This offending was extreme,” she said, adding that it had caused profound harm against a child who was so young that “her ability to resist was non-existent”.
She declined a discount for prior good character, noting that even if he didn’t have much of a criminal record, the fact the abuse went on for a decade made it clear it wasn’t a momentary fall from grace. The judge also declined a reduction for his time on bail, noting that the terms of release were not particularly restrictive.
She allowed a single “minimal” discount of one year to account for his troubled childhood, in which she noted there had been a striking amount of child abuse among his extended family that likely predisposed him to abusing others.
She also ordered that his name be added to the child sex offender register.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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