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A woman has narrowly avoided being jailed after her desperate attempt to stop Australian police acting on her daughter’s complaint of being sexually abused by two relatives in New Zealand.
In a two-hour video call to her 12-year-old daughter overseas, the woman coached the girl in how she could lie and recant her allegations against the two men, including the woman’s husband.
She also sent hundreds of texts to her daughter’s overseas caregiver trying to enlist her support to ensure the girl’s complaints were quashed.
The woman, who for legal reason can’t be named, later pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice — an offence punishable by up to seven years in prison. She was spared a jail term when sentenced yesterday by Judge Warren Cathcart in Gisborne District Court.
However, the judge made it clear the reprieve was only because it was in her dependent children’s best interests for her to remain their primary caregiver.
Calculating the sentence, the judge reached an end point of 23 months imprisonment but accepted counsel Holly Tunstall’s submissions it could be appropriately converted to 11.5 months home detention. Prosecutor Michael Blaschke said the Crown was neutral on that issue.
The court was told that having confided in her mother about sexual offending against her by her stepfather and another family member, the woman did nothing except to move her daughter to Australia.
The woman didn’t tell the girl’s caregiver about the allegations. However, about a month after arriving there, the girl disclosed them to the caregiver. She also told a teacher at her new school.
Australian police were notified along with her mother, who then made a concerted effort from New Zealand to have the complaint stopped.
The woman sent the girl’s caregiver multiple texts in which she tried to minimise her husband’s offending and gave several excuses for not earlier reporting the allegations, including that she was fearful of repercussions and that she might be considered an unfit mother.
Learning from the caregiver that the girl was going to be interviewed by police, the woman insisted her daughter was picked up from school immediately then spent two hours in a video-call coaching her as to excuses she could use to recant her allegations and ensure they weren’t further investigated.
The woman contacted police in an attempt to stop the interview and sent her daughter’s caregiver 177 texts trying to get her to also prevent the interview or ensure that if it did go ahead, the girl would be adequately equipped with lies and misleading information.
The girl did as her mother instructed during the interview, using lies that closely matched the ones suggested to her and saying she’d invented the allegations — they weren’t true.
She later returned to New Zealand and her mother still didn’t take any action over the girl’s complaints, the details of which remain unknown. She eventually admitted the offending, telling police she was worried her daughter might accidentally get the names of the two suspects “muddled”.
Judge Cathcart said it was well settled that disruptions to justice were gravely serious, and the principles of denunciation and deterrence had to be paramount.
Setting a starting point of three years, four months, the judge said he wouldn’t give any uplift for previous offending, albeit he noted with interest that one of the woman’s previous convictions was for leaving a child under 14 without adequate supervision. That conviction was no doubt the reason for her concern she could viewed as a bad mother.
There was a full 25 percent discount (10 months) for her guilty pleas and 5 percent discount for her eventual remorse.
The judge said little weight could be given to an offender’s personal circumstances in these types of cases. It was only the child’s welfare that carried weight and it did so because the law required it.
He pointed to a Supreme Court case that said maintaining the familial relationship and reflecting it in the best interests of a child was a principle that had to be a primary consideration.
“It’s somewhat of an irony I think, because while that principle comes as an aid to you as a mitigating factor, your effort to dissuade your daughter and serious attempt to pervert the course of justice undermine her best interests in airing that complaint freely and with support — which is plainly a difficult exercise for anyone going through that experience, let alone a minor.
“Nevertheless, it is those family circumstances that have all to do with the children’s interests that have led me to discount by a further five months”, which brought the sentence just within range for conversion.