Paedophile who filmed victim gets 13 1/2 years

Jarred James Hutchison arrives in court for sentencing. Picture / Kenny Rodger

A paedophile who filmed himself raping and sexually violating a girl from the age of three has been sentenced to 13 1/2 years in prison.

In one of the worst cases to come before the court, Jarred James Hutchison, 33, yesterday received a 7 1/2-year non-parole period after pleading guilty to 51 charges of sexual violation, 24 charges of rape and 16 charges of making objectionable material. Hutchison filmed the crimes, committed between September 1998 and January last year, on a hand-held video camera.

Psychological and psychiatric reports say Hutchison is a paedophile, who has psychopathic tendencies. He believed he and the girl were in love and he did nothing to hurt her.

Hutchison also told psychologists and psychiatrists he was unsure he would learn anything through counselling or courses.

He has blamed the girl's mother who left her in his care while she worked. It was her "harassment and mind games", he said.

Crown Prosecutor Philip Hamlin, who said it was one of the worst cases to come before the court, sought preventive detention for Hutchison. Hutchison's lawyer Frank Hogan said a lengthy finite sentence was needed for Hutchison, who has one prosthetic testicle after a machinery accident and a serious head injury after a motorcycle crash in 1991 which killed his then-fiance.

Justice Mark Cooper stopped short of imposing preventive detention, saying there was treatment available to Hutchison in prison and he had no previous convictions for sexual offending.

"There is nothing in your record which is of the nature of the current offending or approaching anything near its gravity," Justice Cooper said.

Police seized four bags of videos, photos and evidence from Hutchison's caravan near the family's West Auckland home. Hutchison also took videos of other school children.

"What does it take?" Detective Sergeant Kevin Morshead said as he left the High Court at Auckland.

"The offending occurred because he was a deceitful, evil man and this child will struggle for the rest of her life to cope with the psychological and emotional damage he has inflicted."

The little's girl's father was phoned and told of the sentence. Detective Lehi Hohaia said he was devastated.

When he first appeared in the Waitakere District Court last year Hutchison complained about being cooped up in a cell. Yesterday the man who took hours of videotape and photos of his blindfolded victim kept his head bowed trying to avoid cameras.

The father told the Herald that he is still scared for his daughter.

She told him little by little and made her first complaint to the police in June last year.

The father says he is concerned about his daughter, who has undergone tests for AIDS and other diseases. She has had a cold recently and is worried that she is gravely ill, he says.

The little girl tosses and turns in her bed at night and she screams and yells.

"I walk up to her and pat her on the head and tell her she's safe ... "