Hawke's Bay man gets 15 years for sex crimes

A man has been given the biggest penalty imposed in Hawke's Bay for sexual offending, after waiting until his victim gave evidence in front of a jury before admitting nine years of repeated violations which started when she was just seven.

Trevor Fred Kauika, 39, who first began molesting the girl about 1993, was sentenced to 15 years' jail for the most serious offences of rape, with a minimum non-parole period of nine years, when he appeared in Napier District Court yesterday.

Offences of indecent assault and inducing the girl to commit indecent acts on Kauika started when she was seven, progressed to rape and other sexual violation before she was 12 and continued until she revealed the events in 2002, by which time a 16-year-old friend had also been indecently assaulted.

While admitting three assaults on the complainant, Kauika maintained his pleas of not guilty on charges of raping the girl and other indecencies when his trial started on April 11, and was also to have defended allegations by the second complainant.

The complainant, now 18, had given more than hour of evidence in front of Judge Tony Adeane and the jury when Kauika returned from an adjournment, reversed his stance and pleading guilty.

However, Judge Adeane said Kauika had still made her come to court to give evidence in a room full of unknown adults in the belief her claims would still be challenged.

He said it was "difficult to imagine a more bleak or horrible outcome" than that which had regularly confronted the "little girl," who before her teens was being treated by the accused effectively as a "surrogate partner."

In a condemnation of Kauika's attitude once the victim revealed the events to an elder female family member, the judge said the man had equipped defence counsel Tony Snell with nothing to work with as a credible form of defence.

Crown prosecutor Jonathan Krebs listed a range of specific aggravating features of the offending, including the extent, frequency and duration, violence which was used to overcome resistance, and the "psychological component" -- "insisting the complainant behave as if she were the prisoner's girlfriend... which I find quite repugnant".

There was also a significant breach of trust over the many years of the offending, and the disregard for her wellbeing, including disrupting her education by keeping her out of school, and the abuse associated with her being a vulnerable child with "nowhere else to go".

The probation officer's report said that Kauika remained at high risk of offending.

Altogether, Kauika faced seven mainly representative charges, and was sentenced to concurrent terms of 15 years for rape, 10 years for other forms of sexual violation, three years for other indecencies and a year for the assaults.

- HAWKE'S BAY TODAY