Court rejects appeal of man who hit child with cricket bat

A man who disciplined his six-year-old daughter with a cricket bat when she would not stop coughing has failed to get his six-month jail term reduced.

Arthur Bristowe had been sentenced in Rotorua District Court just before Christmas after admitting assaulting the child with the bat.

In the High Court at Rotorua Justice Rhys Harrison rejected defence arguments that Bristowe should not have been imprisoned.

He said the district court judge was entitled to conclude that jail was the only adequate response to the "violence" meted out to the girl.

The judge also said that home detention would not have met the needs of deterrence and denunciation.

He also said that six months was not manifestly excessive.

Justice Harrison said that Bristowe was the custodian of his daughter.

"She was at home one evening. She was coughing in her bedroom for up to an hour.

"Mr Bristowe became annoyed, both by this event and her previous behaviour.

"He directed his daughter to stand and face the wall.

"He also directed her to remove her pants.

"Mr Bristowe then picked up a cricket bat.

"He struck his daughter up to six times on the left side of her buttocks and to her right upper thigh."

The judge said that the blows, inflicted with the flat side of the bat, caused considerable pain.

When asked to describe the pain on a scale of 1 to 5, the girl described it as a seven.

The judge said that photographs taken after the assault graphically depicted the severe nature of the girl's bruising.

However, the judge said that Bristowe's ill-treatment of the child did not stop there.

"He directed her to sit in her chair and contemplate her behaviour.

"The pain was such that his daughter had difficulty sitting at all," Justice Harrison said.

The next day the girl told her teacher and various government agencies and whanau then became involved.

- NZPA