Tauranga man sentenced to home detention for sexually assaulting niece when he was a teen

A girl was aged between 8 and 10 when her teenage cousin sexually assaulted her. More than 10 years after it happened, he has been sentenced to home detention. Photo / 123RF

Warning: This story deals with details of the sexual assault of a child and may be distressing.

A young woman who was sexually abused by her uncle when he was a teen and she was a child says he made her the “villain” in their family.

The 29-year-old man, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was sentenced in Tauranga District Court on Friday after having been found guilty by a jury on four charges of doing an indecent act on a child.

But the victim, who was between 8 and 10 years old when the assaults happened, said holding him to account had come at a cost.

“I feel as if I’ve lost so much more from your actions than you did,” she said, addressing him through her victim impact statement.

“Sometimes I regret telling anyone, and taking you to court, because I would still have my family.”

The 29-year-old man was found guilty by a jury and sentenced Tauranga District Court this week. Photo / NZME

She had lost her relationship with her father and with her grandmother.

“I’m grieving over relationships I no longer have with such important people in my life,” she said.

“Because of you, my name is a sensitive topic... [it is] followed by a scoff.

“I’m the outcast who has to live with being ridiculed. This should all be you. I’m in the position you’re meant to be in. You’re the reason I’m considered a villain.”

Her uncle was between 16 and 17 years old when he assaulted her while she visited her grandmother’s house, where he lived.

The incidents involved him groping her, lying beside her on a mattress and putting his genitalia against her body, and also placing her hands on his genitalia.

The young woman, who’s now in her 20s, asked her uncle why he continued to deny his actions.

“I had to sit there and listen to your lawyer call me a liar, saying I made everything up, while you sat in silence ... knowing I was telling the truth.”

She said he’d made things “a lot harder” in his attempt to “save” himself.

“Was it not enough that you ruined my childhood?”

The young woman said the experience showed her anyone could harm her no matter their relationship with her, and it meant she had always been on her guard around her uncle.

“You were confident enough to assault me in your mother’s bedroom, so I thought, ‘What’s stopping you anywhere else?’”

Judge Bill Lawson considered the two discrete incidents, for which he was found guilty, to be “serious acts of indecency on a very young person”, involving skin-on-skin contact.

It was clear the offending had a “significant impact” on the victim, the judge found.

“I have to say, it’s not surprising. She was very young when this happened. She was entitled to your trust, and you did not provide that.”

However, he also took into account the man’s age at the time.

He was under 18 when the incidents occurred, and was given a 30% discount for this factor.

His age at the time of the offending also prevented the judge, under Section 18 of the Sentencing Act, from sending him to jail, even if that had been considered the appropriate outcome.

However, Judge Lawson considered the appropriate sentence was one of home detention, given the desirability of keeping people in the community where possible.

The judge said there was no indication he was a “continued risk”.

While the judge initially had concerns about the presence of a child at the proposed address, it turned out the girl living there was the man’s own child.

The man had lived at the address with the child while he was on electronically monitored bail, without incident, and there was “no suggestion” that there was any risk to the girl.

The Crown submitted a starting point of two and a half years.

Prosecutor Laura Clay pointed to the breach of trust, given the relationship, and the fact that the offending happened in the grandmother’s home, where the victim should have been safe.

Defence lawyer Nicola Pointer submitted a starting point of between 16 months and two years.

Judge Lawson adopted a starting point of two years’ imprisonment and after the discount for youth was applied, reached an endpoint of 17 months’ imprisonment.

There was no discount for remorse, as the man did not accept the jury’s verdict.

This was commuted to a home detention sentence of eight and a half months, with emotional harm reparation of $1000.

“No amount of money that I order you to pay is going to alleviate the suffering of your victim,” Judge Lawson said.

“But the law knows no other way but to provide at least a level of monetary payment to assist with counselling and some of the other factors she’s had to undertake.”

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.