A man involved with a Salvation Army youth group has been jailed for four years for raping a teenager.
Trevor Malcolm Pease, aged 32, was found guilty by a New Plymouth jury on two counts of raping the girl in 1993 when she was 13 or 14 and he was 24.
In
the High Court at Auckland yesterday, Justice Rod Hansen said he was sentencing Pease on the basis of the five-year starting point for contested rape cases that applied before higher sentences were introduced in September 1993.
Aggravating features of the offence included the girl's age and Pease's breach of trust, said the judge.
There had been minimal if any physical resistance, but by Pease's own admission, the girl had said "no."
But mitigating factors far outweighed the aggravating features - the prime one being that Pease owned up to the offending because of his troubled conscience.
The judge said he had read a letter from Pease in which he had difficulty accepting his guilt. Pease acknowledged that he had taken advantage of the girl but did not accept that it amounted to rape.
Justice Hansen accepted that Pease was genuinely remorseful for what happened.
Pease's life had been marred by tragedy, including the drowning of his wife three years ago, and the judge said his personal circumstances called for as much mercy as the law permitted.
Defence counsel Andrew Laurenson said it was not a situation of an older man taking advantage of a younger woman. The two had a relationship.
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