A sobbing father has asked a judge to express his family’s remorse to a teenage girl sexually violated by his son in a “terrifying” ordeal.”
“We are very sorry for what happened. If you can please let her know how we feel for her,” he said as he wept openly in the courtroom.
His son, Jarimar Schuster, 27, appeared in the Wellington District Court this afternoon for sentencing on 15 charges, spanning multiple incidents of meth-fuelled offending.
The charges included unlawful sexual connection with a female aged 12-16, abduction of a girl for sex, assault with intent to commit sexual violation, aggravated burglary, threatening to kill and possession of an offensive weapon.
The most serious of those charges involved an assault on the 15-year-old girl in her bedroom.
According to the summary of facts Schuster broke into a house in a Wellington suburb in the early hours of November 2022. Taking a carving knife from the kitchen he knocked on the victim’s door and thinking it was a family member, she got up and opened it.
Half asleep she saw the defendant, whom she didn’t know, in the corridor. When he asked her for a cup of water she went and got it. The victim told the defendant to finish the water and leave.
Instead, he used the knife to jam the door closed and confiscated the victim’s cell phone. The victim was terrified and scared she might die.
He took off his clothes and grabbed the knife from the door before lying on top of her and pointing the knife at her. He began kissing and touching her inappropriately, before forcing her to perform an indecent act on him.
Fearing she would be stabbed, the victim did as she was told.
As the victim stood up and tried to get away from the defendant, he grabbed her around the waist with one hand and covered her mouth and nose with the other so that she couldn’t leave her room.
The ordeal lasted an estimated 40 minutes before he dressed and eventually left the house by the back door, making the victim watch him as he did so.
The defendant told the victim that if she ever saw him again she should pretend not to know him.
When spoken to by police Schuster admitted to being at the house, naked with a knife but denied touching the victim inappropriately or making her perform the indecent act.
Defence lawyer Steve Gill said it was difficult to recognise his client as the person who had committed these crimes.
“He presents now as polite, courteous, sober, none of which, of course, was true at the time.”
Judge Brett Crowley said he had read the submissions for the case on Friday, “and barely stopped thinking about it all weekend, to be frank”.
He described the sexual offending against the teen as “putting her through a horrific ordeal”, and noted the Crown had earlier described it as a “terrifying incident”, that went on for about 40 minutes.
“The fact you didn’t come to your senses at any time when you went into her house and committed these horrific acts on her, makes this very grave offending,” Judge Crowley said.
He said Schuster was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, for which he had repeatedly been admitted to hospital.
His behaviour was regularly aggressive and threatening, and at times his father was so scared of him he slept in the car to avoid sleeping under the same roof.
Schuster had been using meth and cannabis on a near-daily basis since he was a young teenager, and some of this addiction was attributed to childhood trauma he had experienced.
Judge Crowley referred to a letter Schuster had written expressing his remorse and noting he was doing everything he could to become a better person.
He adopted a starting sentence of 12 and a half years but allowed a 60% discount for the guilty pleas, as well as Schuster’s mental health issues, substance abuse problems, childhood trauma, and remorse.
This brought the final sentence down to five years in prison.
Judge Crowley then imposed a minimum non-parole period of 50%. He said the standard 30% non-parole period was insufficient to recognise the seriousness of the offending.
Schuster was also disqualified from driving for six months and added to the Child Sex Offenders Register.
After he left the courtroom, his father stood up, tearfully telling the judge he was “very sorry for what happened”. He asked the court to pass on his family’s apology to the victim.
“It wasn’t the son that we always know,” he said as he wiped at his tears. “I’m very sorry for the victim and her family.”
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media advisor at the Ministry of Justice.
The couple were respected Auckland entrepreneurs, but the drug trade fuelled their wealth.