The Parole Board has declined to release an elderly paedophile who used his position at Catholic boarding schools to physically and sexually abuse boys in the 1970s and 80s.
The lawyer for Charles Robert Afeaki, 83, strongly urged his release during a hearing yesterday, describing his client as a model prisoner and a low risk due in part to his significant health issues.
However, the three-person parole panel said the problem is that alleged victims of Afeaki’s historical offending are still coming forward.
“We need to know where these charges are going,” said panel convenor Judge Jane Lovell-Smith.
“At present, the department won’t do [a psychological assessment] because you have all these active charges.”
The former Marist Brother has been in and out of prison since the mid-1990s, when he was first prosecuted for the historical sexual abuse. He has not been accused of current offending for over two decades, but the number of his known victims from the earlier period has steadily grown.
Afeaki was handed a 25-month prison term in August last year after admitting to the abuse of two boys at schools in Auckland and Invercargill.
Auckland District Court Judge Kirsten Lummis added two months to that sentence in June this year for the abuse in 1975 of a 12-year-old attending Invercargill’s Marist Brothers Primary School.
In a pre-sentencing interview, Afeaki told authorities he didn’t remember that accuser nor the allegation he had pleaded guilty to, but he accepted he must have done it because it matched so closely how he had victimised other boys.
The sentencing was Afeaki’s 40th criminal conviction for child sexual abuse and involved his eighth confirmed victim.
Even during the last sentencing, another set of charges was waiting, involving allegations he repeatedly indecently assaulted an 11-year-old boy in Whanganui in 1977. Those charges remain pending.
And a new charge, involving a 10th accuser, was filed out of Auckland District Court in September. That accuser previously told the Herald he was abused some time between April and June 1980 on a single occasion after he was caught giving the defendant the finger.
Afeaki, then a teacher at St Paul’s College in Ponsonby, allegedly responded by grabbing the student by the arm and pulling him into his personal quarters, closing the door behind him as he began to inflict a series of hard slaps.
“Do you know what the finger means?” Afeaki allegedly asked the young teen. “It means f*** you. So you want me to f*** you, do you?”
The accuser recalled crying, pleading with Afeaki to stop as the teacher continued the beating and tried to pull off his shorts. He wouldn’t tell anybody about the incident until 45 years later, after a near-death experience, he said.
Afeaki has pleaded not guilty to both of the pending sets of charges and has elected a judge-alone trial. A date has not yet been set.
His lawyer confirmed that the pending charges are not suppressed.
During yesterday’s hearing, the contents of which were suppressed until this morning, Judge Lovell-Smith noted that Afeaki’s next parole hearing is set for April.
But she also noted that a lot could happen between now and then – including charges possibly being dropped due to the time elapsed since the alleged offending. If there was a major change in circumstances, she said, Afeaki’s lawyer could apply for an urgent hearing to reconsider parole.
“Hopefully, by April, a lot of things will get sorted,” she said, adding: “We have taken into account your health issues. Obviously, we are concerned about that.”
She noted that the inmate had received positive reports from those who manage his case.
“I’m sorry we can’t give you a decision at this stage on release, but we need to tick all the boxes and be satisfied that you aren’t an undue risk,” she said.
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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