I hate the killer, not the country, says Karen's dad

Brian Aim. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Scotland-based father Brian Aim's beloved and beautiful daughter was brutally murdered in New Zealand - but he hates the criminal rather than the country.

After all his family has been through he still recommends New Zealand as a "safe" country to visit.

Karen Aim, 27, a Scottish tourist, was hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat and murdered in Taupo in January 2008, as she walked home from a night out.

A year ago this week, local teen Jahche Broughton, aged only 14 years when he carried out the killing, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He will be eligible to apply for parole after 12-and-a-half years.

The teen inflicted massive brain injuries on the young woman and then pulled up her skirt, ripped her underpants and hitched up her clothes so that she lay exposed.

He was also sentenced to jail for injuring a 19-year-old woman in an incident a fortnight before the killing. That woman suffered a slow-healing brain injury.

Speaking from his home in the isolated Orkney islands off Scotland on Friday, Brian Aim told the Herald on Sunday he was surprised by the New Zealand Institute's D-ranking for this country on murder rates.

The 53-year-old father-of-two says he has always put down the violence inflicted on his daughter to "a very isolated incident" that happened "in a moment of madness".

He says Eugenie Broughton, the mother of the teen who murdered his daughter, told him he "did it for money for drugs".

Brian Aim says he has visited New Zealand three times and has always felt "safe" and he would continue to recommend friends' children also continue to visit.

rachel.grunwell@hos.co.nz