Guilty pleas to driving and assault offences

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A judge has been told how an 11-year-old boy, regularly beaten and whipped by his father, was removed from his family and sent to Weymouth Boys’ Home, where the abuse by people in authority continued and the boy's criminal offending began.

That boy is now 28. His tragic past was revealed in a cultural report prepared for his recent sentencing in Gisborne District Court on charges largely arising from family harm incidents and his efforts to evade police.

Judge Warren Cathcart accepted the man’s past was causative of his current offending. It was “unsurprising” that soon after arriving at the “notorious” Weymouth residential facility, the boy joined others there in stealing cars and other crimes.

The cultural report was sadly typical of many he received for young Māori men on the East Coast, the judge said. Background factors driving the man’s offending were summed up by the writer as instability of housing, socio-economic deprivation, limited education, normalisation of violence, parental incarceration, abuse in state care, alcohol consumption, gang membership, and the structural disadvantages all of that brought.

The man’s name is being withheld here due to the highly personal nature of the matters that were traversed.

His father was a Mongrel Mob member and a cannabis dealer, often serving jail sentences, leaving the family without money, to go hungry.

After being sent to Weymouth, the boy was moved about foster homes, in one of which he suffered what the judge described as a particularly “serious form” of abuse.

At age 17, he was jailed for aggravated robbery, joining the Black Power gang while in prison.  By 18, he had developed a methamphetamine habit that stuck with him until he was 26.

On a positive note, the report said the man had enjoyed a stable period in his life at age 26 when he became a painter. And he had also become a father in his early 20s.

He was in court having pleaded guilty to a raft of offences, several of which he committed while on bail. There were two breaches of a protection order, assault on a person in a family relationship, intentional damage, reckless driving, two counts of failing to stop, driving while disqualified for a third or subsequent time, and theft.

The judge allowed a three-month discount for the background factors before imposing 168 days’ imprisonment — equivalent to a sentence of about 11 months.

It was time served for the man, who had been that long on remand in custody.

The first of the family harm incidents was on December 30, last year. The man was trying to evade police, not wanting to end up in custody, when he insisted his partner and her two children sleep the night with him in her car at the hospital carpark. However, the woman said she wanted to get the children home to their beds. The man punched her four times in the face in front of them.

He drove them to another carpark, where the couple argued about the assault. The children crawled on to their mother’s lap hoping it would prevent the man hitting her again. He eventually relented and took them home. The court was told there had been four previous family harm incidents reported to police and the woman had a protection order.

Overnight on January 3, she woke to him banging on her windows, yelling to be let in. When she refused, he punched and smashed a window, cutting himself badly in the process. Then he ran off.

The theft was on December 25. The man was at a table outside Captain Morgan’s café when he noticed a tourist get up from another table, leaving a small bag behind. Identifying the man’s car on CCTV footage, police discovered it had since been impounded for something else. The bag was in it, albeit missing $20 cash and the woman’s car key.

The first of the driving incidents was on June 1 last year, when the man was caught driving while disqualified for a seventh time.

He was stopped again while driving on August 12 and after failing an initial breath test, sped off through the checkpoint, later claiming it wasn’t him.

Just after 3am on December 30, he was sitting in the driver seat of his vehicle, stopped on Gladstone Road. Police patrol cars with flashing lights pulled up in front and behind him.

The man started his engine, reversed into one of the cars then collided with the one in front before taking off. He drove for a time on the wrong side of the road, then sped through a nearby intersection oblivious to the possibility of other traffic.

About 8.45pm on December 29, he was stopped at another checkpoint and as before, sped off before he could be fully tested.

The driving offences resulted in disqualifications — the longest for two years.