A Tauranga man has been imprisoned for raping his 8-year-old cousin. Photo / 123RF
Warning: This story includes details of the sexual abuse of a child and may be distressing.
A young man who was trusted to be among his young cousins “ripped that trust to shreds” when he repeatedly sexually assaulted one of them.
The Tauranga man was aged between 17 and 20 when he raped and indecently assaulted the girl, who was between 8 and 10 at the time.
She shared a room in the main house with her two younger siblings, while the young man, who cannot be named, stayed in a sleepout on the property.
According to the summary of facts, he would sneak into the girl’s bedroom at night, often telling her he was “scared to sleep on [his] own”.
There, he would sometimes lie on top of her while showing her pornography on his tablet.
At other times, he would remove his pants and lie in her bed, kissing and licking her neck.
His offending began in early 2021, and the last occasion was in April 2024.
Sometime during that period, he touched her genital area over the top of her clothes when she was in the living room.
On a further occasion, he indecently assaulted her while she was showering.
Sometime in 2023, he raped her in the lounge, while her father and siblings were home but not nearby.
Sometime between March and April 2024, he indecently assaulted the girl in her bedroom and, in early April 2024, he raped her when her two sisters were in the bedroom.
And around the same time that year, the girl entered his sleepout and initiated sexual intercourse, which he did not attempt to stop.
The man, now 22, pleaded guilty to three charges of sexual violation by rape and four charges of indecently assaulting a child, having received a sentence indication in the Tauranga District Court in August.
Judge Melinda Mason adopted a starting point of eight and a half years’ imprisonment.
At the recent sentencing, the victim’s mother read a victim impact statement in which she spoke of her anger and grief over the loss of innocence suffered by her daughter.
“I am angry at you because we trusted you to be among our children, your cousins, and you ripped that trust to shreds ... we welcomed you into our home, not knowing the intentions you had.”
She was also angry that the man’s own “beautiful daughter grows up without her father”.
“It also saddens me because we will always love you, but only from afar.
“I hope this time you spend between four walls allows you to reflect on every decision that you made, right down to stripping my daughter of her innocence, because what you did to her is not fair.
“I truly pray that someday we will come to forgive you.
“And in return, you seek forgiveness from your cousins, myself, your uncle, and especially the Lord.”
In sentencing the man, Judge Mason acknowledged the impact the offending had not only on the victim, but on the wider family.
She applied a 25% discount for the man’s guilty plea.
She said a psychological report filed ahead of sentencing discussed cognitive issues, which related to the man’s background.
Crown prosecutor Laura Clay said she had been troubled by the level of discount sought on what was a “mild cognitive impairment, foetal alcohol syndrome and a relatively low IQ”.
She noted that some of the issues raised in the report, which included the man’s lack of understanding about his offending, seemed to be “aggravating in terms of the risk that the defendant does pose at the end of the sentence”.
However, she accepted this would be a matter for the Parole Board to consider.
The man’s lawyer, Craig Horsley, clarified that the 20% discount sought was a global discount, which accounted for his personal circumstances, his youth at the time and lack of previous convictions.
Clay said she couldn’t take issue with the 20%, if “a large amount of that is a reduction in terms of youth”.
Judge Mason said that, when she looked at all the factors, a 20% discount was appropriate.
This mostly reflected his youth, but also the matters traversed in the psychological report, which demonstrated that perhaps he “[didn’t] have the ability to think as carefully or fairly as some other people of your age”.
The man received an end sentence of four and a half years’ imprisonment.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.