Napier teacher convicted for assaults on stepson

Brent Duncan Wilson, 41, of Napier, appeared for sentencing in Napier District Court. Photo / File

A teacher has lost a bid for name suppression and to avoid conviction after being found guilty on two charges of assaulting his stepson.

When Brent Duncan Wilson, 41, of Napier, appeared for sentencing in Napier District Court today Judge Tony Adeane rejected lawyer Matt Dixon's application for a discharge without convictions and name suppression.

Deciding there would be no further penalty, the judge said Wilson had no insight into or appreciation of the era into which he was born, amid law that was "very publicly and controversially amended now some years ago".

Wilson had defended the charges at a trial and been found guilty, mainly on the boy's evidence, and the judge said yesterday that although Wilson claimed some justification the law was against him and "at the end of the day the defence amounted to no defence at all".

The offences came to light after an incident on October 22 last year, leading to the boy's allegations of an earlier offence on an unknown date in October or November 2015, when the boy was 12.

A summary said that in the first incident the boy's "behaviour became challenging" when he entered his mother's bedroom early one morning.

Wilson escorted the boy back to his own room and there held him down on a bed, and put his hand over the boy's mouth and his fingers beneath the boy's nose, blocking the airways for a few seconds.

In the second incident the boy left the dinner table without his mother's permission and Wilson grabbed him by an arm and returned him to his seat.

Dixon said Wilson was known as a kind and responsible person and worker, but accepted "dysfunction" had crept into his relationship with the boy.

The lawyer argued the actions, on two occasions, did not suggest a "drastic departure" from good parenting.