Cardno father, stepmother guilty of 14-year-old's rape

Photo / NZ herald

Two Wellington brothel owners were today found guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl, who they later employed as a child prostitute.

Gary John Duffin and Sharyn Lee Hills, the father and step-mother of murdered Lower Hutt schoolgirl Karla Cardno, were jointly found guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl, who shortly after began working for them as a prostitute.

In the High Court at Wellington today, the jury also found Duffin guilty of indecent assault, through touching the girl's genital area during the incident, which happened between May 1991 and December 1992.

Duffin was also found guilty of an additional charge of sexual violation, for later rubbing himself up against the girl's groin when briefing her for her first job in the couple's Mt Victoria brothel.

Hills and Duffin were found not guilty of two charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, relating to Hills licking the girl's genitals, and Duffin forcing the girl to lick Hills' genitals.

The jury reached their verdict after five-and-a-half hours of deliberation.

Yesterday, the couple changed their earlier pleas to admit 10 charges of supplying three teenagers - including the girl - with cannabis between May 1991 and December 1992.

About two years before the sexual assault, Duffin's 13-year-old daughter, Karla Cardno, was kidnapped, raped and tortured.

Her killer, Paul Dally, then took her to a beach near Wellington, beat her on the head with a piece of driftwood and buried her alive.

However, Justice John Gendall told the jury to feel neither prejudice against nor sympathy for either of the accused or the complainant, who after the rape became, by her own admission, a drug-addicted child prostitute.

Justice Gendall told the jurors they did not need to determine any motivation of the accused for the sexual violation.

"All you need to determine is, if you believe her, for whatever reason, that that is what happened...that night."

After the jurors returned their verdict, the judge told them:

"Try not to think about what has happened this week, though it will be a very human thing to do. Time will erase what you have heard this week," he said.

The couple's defence centred around suggestions the girl consented to having sex - variously saying she wanted money or cannabis, or was attracted to Duffin.

Earlier today, Hills' lawyer, Rennie Gould, told the court the violations were really "an evolved, or changed, record of events".

"Her believing it to be true does not make it true," Ms Gould told the jury.

She suggested the complainant needed to blame someone for her descent into the "sordid world" of prostitution and drugs and invented the rape and violation.

The couple were remanded in custody for sentencing in the High Court at Wellington on November 13.

- NZPA