"I thought it would be cathartic but it triggered many more flashbacks and nightmares."
The woman said she is always on "constant alert" and acutely aware of her surroundings, and suffers from chronic health conditions which specialists told her were related to the sexual trauma she experienced as a child.
"You almost destroyed me. Instead, you stunted my growth."
She often felt detached, numb, guarded, and unsafe, and remembers being intensely shy as a child after the offending. When men came to visit she would hide under the bed, behind doors, and under the house to avoid them.
"You were the ultimate manipulator and predator."
The offending has made it difficult for her to feel intense or strong emotion.
"I hold myself together with what feels like barbed wire."
The woman said there was only one route to the home she now lives in, but that means driving daily past the spot where the first rape happened.
Despite marrying her husband 44 years ago, she found the strength to tell him about the offending only five years ago.
The other victim said the offending profoundly shaped her, and that her children called her the "fun police" because she was never able to relax and enjoy herself.
"There are so many things that you took from me that I've never felt like a whole person ... you made me feel dirty and disgusting and that I was to blame."
She has never felt truly loved and has been unable to properly love other people.
"You took my sexuality and womanhood," she said, adding that she finds things of a sexual nature "abhorrent" and that she does not enjoy being physically close or touching anyone, even to receive a hug of comfort.
"You're responsible for making me feel the way I do ... you have totally shattered our lives."
The man was sentenced yesterday on four counts of rape, two of indecent assault, three of performing an indecent act, and one of inducing a girl to perform an indecent act on him.
During the trial, jurors heard that the man offended against both girls on a number of occasions between 1960 and 1972.
The earliest charge is dated between 1960 and 1961, when the complainant was about 7 or 8 years old, and the defendant would have been 13 or 14.
Defence lawyer Emma Priest said the offending was some of the most historical in New Zealand, and that her client had led an "exemplary" life.
She said he grew up in a highly dysfunctional environment, and was physically abused as a child.
She asked for a 20-25 per cent discount to the man's sentence for his age, the prospect of death in prison, and his health issues. She also asked for youth discount, as when much of the offending happened he would have been legally a child.
Judge Denys Barry sentenced him to three years and one month in jail.
Priest asked for the man to stay on bail until appeal, rather than go to prison, but Judge Barry declined the application.
