By GREGG WYCHERLEY
Ramon Doughty knew how to manipulate his three young sex victims, threatening the eldest that if she did not submit he would abuse the two younger girls.
"If you don't do to me what I want you to do, then I'll get it off X," the Anglican trust foster father known as "Uncle Ray" would tell her.
The eldest suspected one of the younger sisters was being molested - but knew the other was because she had seen him.
"That made me sick because I knew what he was going to do to her ... but there was no way I could stop it," she told the Weekend Herald.
"I've had that guilt with me because she was younger and I knew it was happening to her, but I was so damned scared myself about what would happen if I told anybody."
Over about seven years, Doughty raped, sodomised and in other ways sexually abused the three at the Blackwood House foster home in Herne Bay, leaving them with a legacy of pain for the next three decades.
Last year, after finally talking to a counsellor, one of the girls broke her silence.
On Tuesday, 72-year-old Doughty will stand before a judge in the High Court at Hamilton to face sentencing on 17 charges of sexual abuse.
The charges date back between 1967 and 1974, when he and his wife ran Blackwood House, an Anglican trust foster home in Herne Bay.
Doughty denied the charges on his arrest last June, but admitted them three days before the trial was to begin on May 20.
One of the women has been paid $75,000 compensation by the Anglican Trust For Women & Children, and the two other victims are now also pursuing claims.
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