Ex-Marist Brother Charles Afeaki faces fourth sentencing for student abuse in Auckland, Invercargill

A former Catholic school teacher and serial abuser of boys with three previous convictions for sexual offending will now be sentenced for a fourth time after admitting another historic crime.

Charles Robert Afeaki, 81, was a Marist Brother who used his teaching positions in Invercargill and Auckland in the 1970s and early 1980s to target victims. He often claimed to be disciplining his victims for alleged minor infractions, dishing out instead sadistic sexual abuse.

His crimes first caught up to him in the 1990s, when he was found guilty after a trial in the High Court at Auckland of abusing four former students. He was sentenced again in the High Court in 2003 after a fifth student came forward and again last year – this time in Auckland District Court – for the abuse of two others.

In January, he returned to Auckland District Court – albeit via an audio-video link from prison – and admitted to abusing an eighth boy during the same period.

Afeaki faces a sentence of up to 10 years' imprisonment for the latest charge of indecency between a man and a boy. But as judges have noted time and time again as he stood before them, a lengthy sentence is unlikely.

“This is a complicated sentencing exercise,” Judge Kirsten Lummis explained when she sentenced him in August. “I now have the unenviable task of looking backwards and considering what those [previous] judges would have done had this offending been before them as well.”

Charles Afeaki in the 1970s. Photo / Supplied

Instead of approaching the case afresh, she had to add an incremental amount reflective of what she reckoned her predecessors would have doled out had all the victims been known during the previous sentencings.

In August, she settled on a sentence of 25 months' imprisonment, rejecting Afeaki’s request for home detention due in part to his age and frailty.

She will again be the judge tasked with determining his sentence in May.

‘Wretched hypocrite’

Afeaki, then known as Brother Charles, taught at the now defunct Marist Brothers Primary School in Invercargill from 1973 to 1977, before moving to Auckland to teach at St Paul’s College in Ponsonby.

Afeaki was described in court documents as a school master responsible for overseeing boarding school pupils on campus, at school camps and other outings.

“I have no cause to doubt that throughout the course of his teaching career Mr Afeaki has been an outstanding teacher,” Justice Ted Thomas said at his December 1994 sentencing. “I also have regard to the fact that he has a good record as a community worker. He has demonstrated over many years a keen sense of community service.”

But that was about the only positive thing the judge had to say about him.

Police launched an investigation in early 1993 after the first outcry and interviewed Afeaki – no longer a Marist Brother – in May that year, before his arrest in November.

Part of the reason for the delay, police explained at the time, was that they hoped for a stronger case if additional complainants came forward. The accuser reached out to other former students and, with help from police in Australia, others in the months that followed who agreed to share their accounts.

A year after his arrest, Afeaki was found guilty at trial of 15 sexual abuse charges concerning incidents that occurred between August 1976 and December 1980. One complainant had attended school in Invercargill; three others in Auckland.

Afeaki testified at trial and suggested the complainants were seeking revenge on him for having been a harsh schoolmaster. His lawyer also argued they might have been motivated to lie by an ACC or civil suit payout.

In a terse judgment months after the trial concluded, the Court of Appeal would later label the defence a “conspiracy theory” seeming to “totally lack any foundation”.

During his sentencing, Justice Thomas noted with disdain that Afeaki’s supporters remained “totally convinced” he had been wrongly accused.

The Rt Hon Justice Ted Thomas in his room at the Court of Appeal in Wellington in 2001. He was elevated from the High Court to the Court of Appeal in 1995, one year after sentencing Afeaki. Photo / Mark Mitchell

“Mr Afeaki would have his family and friends believe that he is guiltless; that four complainants and one witness conspired to give evidence against him and perjured themselves in doing so; that a senior police officer fabricated his record of his interview with Mr Afeaki, and that eventually the jury returned a wrong and perverse verdict,” the judge said. “None of these things are correct.

“Mr Afeaki, to put it bluntly, is a wretched and self-dedicated hypocrite, who not only committed the offences for which he has been convicted, but also then maintained his innocence and lied on oath.”

He went on to describe the evidence against Afeaki as “immensely strong“ and characterised the defence as having frequently made “cruel and baseless allegations” against his accusers.

The judge declined to outline the abuse in detail but noted that one student said his ear was nibbled in the classroom as he was groomed, followed eventually by repeated rape. Another former student told of having been taken from his bed twice weekly for a year.

“Mr Afeaki was in a position of dominance,” the judge noted. “He wielded, next to parenthood, probably the most important position of trust over children that it is possible to wield, and he abused that trust.”

A probation report assessed Afeaki as an extremely high risk of reoffending and noted that any attempt at treatment would be a “nonsensical exercise” since he didn’t accept guilt.

Atonement

But the justice system took a much softer approach nine years later when Afeaki returned to the High Court for sentencing a second time.

He had been paroled from prison in 1998 and when a new accusation surfaced involving a different victim from two decades earlier, he accepted responsibility for nine charges and apologised to the victim’s family.

Justice Hugh Williams allowed a sentence of home detention, finding that the judge who sentenced him in 1994 would have likely considered a “relatively modest” increase had there been five victims on record at the time instead of four.

Furthermore, the earlier justice’s “wretched and self-dedicated hypocrite” assessment no longer seemed to apply because Afeaki had turned his life around, Justice Williams said.

Since his release from jail, the defendant said he had made significant efforts to prevent reoffending, including refraining from going anywhere there might be young men, the Herald reported at the time. The efforts were partly to “atone” for his past offending, his lawyer said.

The judge described it as significant that he finally understood the damage he had done.

Life of terror

That acceptance and atonement appears to have faded somewhat by the time Afeaki’s third tranche of historic charges were filed in 2021.

He was given a sentence indication the following year but continued to dispute the allegations until the third day of his trial in December 2023. At that point he flipped his pleas to guilty for all 15 charges but the first victim had already been cross-examined and the second was at court waiting to be called.

The first complainant had been between the ages of 11 and 12 when Afeaki targeted him at Marist Brothers Primary School in 1975. It started with him laughing in class on one occasion and Afeaki ordering him to stay behind for discipline.

“You locked the door leaving only two of you in the classroom,” Judge Lummis said in her sentencing remarks before outlining the rape that followed. “You told the victim you knew where he lived, which he understood to be a threat. That behaviour continued for the rest of the year until the end of the school year.”

Judge Kirsten Lummis, photographed outside the High Court at Auckland in 2015. Photo / Supplied

The same victim recalled being abused behind the scout den at the school on numerous occasions and during a school camp trip to Deep Cove in Doubtful Sound.

“The abuse I suffered by him turned my life from normality into terror,” he said in his victim impact statement. “Instead of wanting to be educated, I went to: ‘How do I escape school, how do I escape from this terror?’ To cope, I turned to alcohol and whilst 12 years of age I became an alcoholic.”

A loss of faith, suicide attempts and a long criminal career followed, the court was told. Judge Lummis praised the witness for the way he gave evidence at trial and the “very honest way” he recounted the ups and downs of his life.

The second victim was also 12 years old when Afeaki abused him in Auckland four years later. At the time, he had not adjusted well to boarding school and was disruptive in class. On five or six occasions, he was ordered into a back room for “discipline” but was actually abused. At one point, the child was admitted to the hospital and he recalled twice waking up in his hospital bed to Afeaki touching him inappropriately.

“The defendant changed the course of my life forever,” he said in his victim impact statement. “The effects are endless and I will be forced to live with them till the day I die. There are no reparations that can make up for the life I’ve had to endure since this person chose me.”

According to the summary of facts for the latest case, for which Afeaki has not been sentenced, the eighth accuser was yet again a 12-year-old, who had been his student in Invercargill.

“During a lunchtime school break on a Friday between 5 Sept 1975 and 26 Sept 1975, the victim was involved in a playground altercation where he physically assaulted another pupil,” court documents state. “The defendant intervened and sent the victim to wait outside his classroom. The victim knew he was in trouble.

“When the defendant arrived, he dragged the victim into the classroom and shut the door behind him.”

Afeaki then yelled at the student before double-checking that the door was locked and circling behind him. He grabbed the victim by the throat as he abused him.

“As the victim cried uncontrollably, the defendant cautioned him to be quiet,” documents state. “When he finished, he told the victim to pull his shorts up and get back outside.”

Later in the day, the teacher approached the student in art class and pinched him “hard like a wasp sting” while quietly warning him not to tell anyone. Afeaki declined to speak to police about the latest allegation but he accepted the summary of facts was true.

He was charged with a single count of indecency between a man and boy – his 40th criminal conviction.

‘Gross breach of trust’

During Afeaki’s last sentencing in August, Judge Lummis said the “gross breach of trust between a teacher and a student” was a significant aggravating factor for her to consider.

She accepted he deserved a discount – albeit small – for his very late guilty plea and for his old age and ill health. Defence lawyer Roger Eagles described his client’s health as having deteriorated considerably in recent times.

Afeaki also deserved discounts for his rehabilitation efforts and for having gone over 40 years now “without any known further offending”. She noted that a psychological report, unlike in 1994, now assessed him as a below-average risk of sexual reoffending.

Auckland District Court. Photo / Nick Reed

However, she questioned whether his remorse was genuine, especially given that there still appeared to be a denial of the charges that were currently before the court. Afeaki had said he didn’t recall the second victim being in his classroom.

“I accept, as Mr Eagles has said, that in the 21 years that have passed since Williams J was dealing with you, I am now faced with an elderly frail man who will find any prison sentence far more onerous than you might have at age 60,” she continued. “I have no doubt that had Williams J been dealing with these matters at the same time as the other victim in 2003 that you would have had a sentence of imprisonment which would not have been able to be converted into home detention.

“The offending I am dealing with was a sustained, serious set of offences over several years and, in the end, despite your frail state of health, it is my view that imprisonment is the only appropriate option.”

Order’s ‘tragic history’

Under what circumstances Afeaki left the Marist Brothers has remained a point of confusion for the courts for decades.

He testified during his 1994 trial that he left the order to look after his mother. He would later tell a probation officer he had only reluctantly stayed with the order for so long, having realised he’d lost his vocation for the religious life. It’s clear he remained a member while teaching in Invercargill.

In the past, the religious order has done little to shed light on the matter.

In 2018, while reporting on a victim given the pseudonym Simon who at that point had not filed a criminal complaint against Afeaki, NZME sought to clarify the matter. A spokeswoman for the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference ignored questions about when and where he served, when complaints against him were first received and the circumstances of his departure.

A victim (pictured) came forward to allege sexual abuse in 1975 by one of the order's members, Brother Charles Afeaki. Photo / Gerard O'Brien, Otago Daily Times

“The Marist Brothers do not disclose personal information to media,” she said at the time.

But times have changed and today the New Zealand Marist Brothers website has at least three apologies in prominent places.

“The Marist Brothers in Aotearoa – New Zealand accept that abuse occurred in the past and acknowledge the long-lasting consequences of abuse,” a pop-up banner on the homepage reads. “We are sorry for hurt caused to those in our care.”

Under a tab devoted to professional standards, the brotherhood states: “We should have protected those in our care from any form of abuse and, thankfully, we now recognise it for what it is – it is a criminal offence.”

In July last year, just days before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care released its final report, the group issued a formal apology on its media page but with a focus primarily on abusive corporal punishment.

A few days later, after the report’s release, they praised those who came forward.

“It is a tragic but inescapable part of our own history that, at times, children have been failed in Marist Brothers’ schools in Aotearoa New Zealand,” the follow-up media release stated.

The Marist Brothers religious order was founded just over 200 years ago in Europe with a focus on the spiritual and educational needs of the young and poor. It had once prospered in New Zealand but most remaining brothers were in retirement by 2018.

Many schools affiliated with the group remain open, including Auckland’s St Paul’s College, but rely on lay staff to operate.

In the 1990s alone, nine Marist Brothers – Afeaki included – were prosecuted for crimes against boys. Others were investigated with no further action taken or dealt with internally by the Catholic Church, the Herald previously reported.

Former Marist brother Kevin Healy appears at court for sentencing on historic sex offences. Photo / Paul Taylor

Another brother, Kevin Peter Healy, was sentenced for the first time in Wellington in 2016. Like Afeaki, he has now been sentenced on four separate occasions as word of the prosecutions spread to victims and more came forward. His most recent sentence, six months’ community detention, was imposed last year.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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