The teenage boy was angry, upset and no longer wanted to feel afraid in his “own home”, so while away on holiday at an aunty’s, he told her what had been happening.
The man was found guilty at trial in the Tauranga District Court in May, and was jailed on Friday.
The full scale of the man’s offending was revealed at trial, where he faced 27 charges related to five cousins – all his partner’s nieces and nephews.
The most serious offending related to the teenage boy, however,
The then-24-year-old would lead him out of sight, take advantage of them being alone in a car, or come into the room where he slept and “force him” to perform oral sex.
He also used family events as opportunities to pressure the boy to perform the sexual act, including after family communion.
He was threatened with a “hiding” if he didn’t give the man oral sex.
During the trial, the court heard another victim was taken outside to a porch by her aunty’s partner late one night after he’d found her upset.
He offered her a comforting side hug, before sliding his hand into her bra.
A younger cousin, who was 12 at the time, was asleep in the lounge next to her Nan when she had woken to find the man attempting to “wedge” his hand between her legs and touch her “private part”.
“I felt like if I screamed I would wake the house up, but if I didn’t, I’d be in more trouble,” the girl said at trial.
The abuse escalated when he removed her pants and sexually violated her in a small shed on the property.
She said she “froze”.
Two other victims saw the defendant expose his genitalia and play with it while staring at the younger of the two, a then 10-year-old girl.
The victims were living or staying at a whānau home in Kawerau where the man and his partner, the children’s aunt, also lived for a time.
The man had physically and sexually abused the victims through forced oral sex, groping, hands under clothing, and physical violence, and the cousins were aged between 10 and 15 at the time of the offending.
At his sentencing, Judge David Cameron said the 26-year-old, who denied all the offending, was found guilty of 25 of the 27 charges.
The judge said the man had been assessed as having a high risk of reoffending, very little insight into his actions, and had expressed no remorse.
The man was given an end sentence of 12 years and six months’ imprisonment.
The judge adopted a starting point of 16 years for the most serious charge – a representative charge for the repeated sexual offending against the teenage boy.
This was uplifted by two years to account for the offending against the other victims.
The judge gave the man a discount of 25% for personal circumstances which included his having no previous convictions, otherwise good character, and the fact that English is not his first language and he’d been in New Zealand only a short time before the offending happened, and therefore prison was likely to be more difficult for him.
He was also given a further 5% discount to account for time spent on electronic-monitoring (EM) bail awaiting trial.
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.
