KEY POINTS:
Pepper was thrown in a boy's eyes as a punishment for cruelty to a dog, a court has heard.
Craig Leslie Ozich had been boarding at a house where the boy and his mother lived.
The boy's mother was recuperating after an operation, and Ozich had taken over
some of the duties of looking after the house, and the boy.
On August 6, Ozich was asked by the mother to help deal with an incident involving her son. The boy had been putting pepper in their pet dog's eyes.
Ozich responded by taking the pepper shaker from the boy and putting pepper in both of his eyes, causing them to burn, and the child to start screaming.
Ozich later said he wanted the boy to feel what it was like.
The boy suffered no lasting injuries as a result of the attack.
Ozich, 31, was sentenced at Lower Hutt District Court today by Judge John Walker to 150 hours' community service after pleading guilty to assault on a child.
He was also ordered to undergo 18 months' supervision, with special conditions, including an order to undergo counselling, and an order not to have any contact with his victim without authorisation from his probation officer.
Defence counsel Sue Earl said the boy had been undergoing some "huge difficulties", which had since been diagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and possibly a form of Asperger Syndrome.
The disorders manifested themselves in the boy in the form of cruelty towards animals, and violence towards people, Ms Earl said.
The mother had not been coping.
"Mr Ozich did resort, unthinkingly at the time, to actually sprinkling the pepper on the young victim's face," Ms Earl said.
"In hindsight he does realise as the adult he shouldn't have done that."
Ozich was no longer living at the house and there was "no chance" of him moving back in, but he and the mother remained friends, and wanted that friendship to continue. The mother was in court supporting Ozich.
He was immediately remorseful at the pain he had caused and washed out the child's eyes before he was taken to a medical centre.
Judge Walker said the boy's behaviour had been "very testing" for all around him, but had improved since his illness was diagnosed.
"It was an inappropriate and extreme reaction looking at it clearly and at a distance from all those stressors, but it was borne out of stressful circumstances," he said.
Mitigating the crime was Ozich's immediate remorse and early guilty plea.
- NZPA