“We did lose close family members because of this, people who we thought loved and cared about us. We even lost the person who was closest family to us — our mother.
“I’m just grateful that we had some family that stuck with us throughout and encouraged us every day to carry on till the end. Because of them we made it and we got the justice we deserve,” the woman said.
The man, aged about 50, cannot be named without risk of identifying the victims, whose details are automatically protected by law.
He was in his 40s — at least 30 years older than each of the girls and in a long-term relationship with their mother, purporting to be the girls’ stepfather, when he offended against them.
He continues to deny the offending, claiming the girls were “put up to it by police” and that the court process was to blame for a jury finding him guilty of 10 charges.
Those charges were the rape of one of the girls when she was 11; two of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and two of sexual conduct with a young person, representing multiple times over two years when he digitally penetrated another of the girls in the family’s home, when she was aged between 12 and 16; three of sexual connection with a young person in relation to a single incident in which he got into bed with another of the girls when she was 12 or 13, touched and sucked her breast and groped her bottom, while putting her hand on his penis; and sexual conduct with a young person and sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection in respect of a single incident in which he got into bed with another of the girls when she was between 10 and 11, rubbed her back with his penis, and digitally penetrated her.
Crown prosecutor Steve Manning applauded the girls for their bravery and for standing firm for what was right, especially after they had been actively discouraged by some of the people close to them. Those family dynamics were obvious at trial, Mr Manning said.
Judge Bolstad said the significant impact of the man’s offending on his stepdaughters, and the breach of trust involved, was clear. The women would likely still be affected by it for years.
Commenting on the rape, the judge said the girl was highly vulnerable and the violation, significant. The girl was in unfamiliar surroundings, alone in a tent at a tangi, when the man snuck in, covered her mouth, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her. Afterward, he pulled the girl’s tights up and warned her not to tell anyone.
The other lead offending was the man’s persistent violations of one of the girls for two years. The judge said the man should have been protecting the girl, not abusing her. He took advantage of the girl in the sanctity of her own home, when others in the house were asleep or out. The girl couldn’t escape. It was her home. She told her mother, but wasn’t believed so didn’t try to tell anyone else.
The judge adopted stand-alone starting points of seven years imprisonment for each of those sets of offences.
Stacked with separate, stand-alone starting points for the offending against each of the other sisters, the overall starting point reached about 20 years imprisonment but was reduced for totality to 11 years.
There was no uplift for the man’s 22 prior convictions as none were for this type of offending.
Assessing available discounts, the judge said there couldn’t be any for remorse — the man had none.
She gave him 10 percent discount for personal circumstances and his more positive traits as outlined in several letters of support.
There was no discount for background matters traversed in a Section 27 Cultural Report. The man had been disadvantaged in childhood and subject himself to abuse by a step-parent, but it was not causative or contributory to this offending, the judge said.
She gave him seven months discount for his time on electronically-monitored bail, which had been lengthy and out of town.
