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A woman's secret past of childhood sexual abuse was reawakened after the man who molested her turned up more than three decades later - as her wedding photographer, a court heard yesterday.
Now, the Hastings man convicted of raping a 9-year-old in the early 1970s is in custody awaiting sentence on multiple charges of abuse of the girl and two other children.
Timber company foreman Peter Herbert Parker, 53, was remanded for sentence to December 7 after a jury in the Napier District Court ended four hours' deliberation with a verdict of guilty on the only charge he denied among seven laid by police in November last year.
Parker had previously pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault and inducing indecent acts, representing numerous offences with the girl from when she was aged about 6, and with another girl and a boy, both aged under 12.
Offences started when Parker was in his early 20s, and started with offences in a wardrobe during games of hide and seek he played with the eventual rape victim while visiting her family.
Sentence had been deferred pending the outcome of the rape trial.
The victim told the court that when it happened, she screamed, pushed Parker off her, and ran to tell an uncle.
But it was otherwise kept secret for many years, including several years after Parker reappeared in her life as the photographer on her wedding day.
Parker had told police he had wondered for years when the offences, committed at times between the early 1970s and about 1983, would come back to haunt him.
- Hawkes Bay Today
