Conscious of her presence in court, the judge said he would summarise the offending only briefly “so as not to re-traumatise her but to state the core facts”.
The offending happened when she and her siblings regularly visited their grandmother. On one occasion, when the man was aged 57, he had put his tongue on the girl’s genitalia. Another time he induced her to stimulate his penis with her hand. Throughout the offending period, he would digitally penetrate her genitalia. It happened so often, the girl couldn’t say how many times.
“The sheer scale of that offending was staggering,” Judge Cathcart said. It had caused “significant harm” to the girl.
In a victim impact statement handed up to the court, the girl said she had been scared and confused and stopped wanting to go to school. She felt guilty for the impact on her family and wanted nothing to do with the man.
The girl’s mother told the court she felt guilty for the offending. The family as a whole had been impacted and some family relationships had broken down.
The judge said while there was no expert evidence before the court, the man’s paedophiliac tendencies could be inferred from his past offending and remarks he made to a pre-sentence report writer, which “came close to admissions of being attracted to children”.
In 1995, the man was jailed for sexual offending against his stepdaughter when she was seven. It involved three incidents.
He was jailed for another nine months in 1999 for further sexual offending involving a girl under 12.
His offending this time had resulted in him pleading guilty to seven counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection — two of them representative of multiple offences — and two charges of doing indecent acts.
In submissions, Crown prosecutor James Bridgman noted the man had been a victim of sexual abuse himself as a child.
While it was accepted that could have contributed to his offending, it must also have meant he knew he was perpetuating the cycle.
Previous prison terms hadn’t deterred him. This wasn’t a one-off offence where he could claim to have slipped up or momentarily relapsed.
The man had every opportunity to desist and reflect and he must have known the harm he was causing having seen it himself and having done it before, Mr Bridgman said.
Counsel Manaaki Terekia generally agreed with Mr Bridgman that the sentence starting point, based on a guideline case and other legal decisions, should be about nine years.
The judge adopted that starting point and uplifted it by five months for the man’s previous offences.
Although historic they were highly relevant, the judge said. They showed the man’s paedophiliac tendencies.
He posed a high risk of reoffending and would need expert programmes and proper counselling.
Discounts for mitigating factors included a full 25 percent for the man’s early guilty pleas and 11 months discount for the background abuse he suffered, which the judge accepted had contributed to his offending.
There was no discount for remorse. While the man recognised his offending, the duration of it ruled out any claim he could make to be truly remorseful, the judge said.
The custodial sentence meant the man would automatically be added to a national register of child sex offenders.
