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The family of well-known Christchurch businessman and sex offender Peter Stewart says it will continue to protest his innocence after his victim's supporters called on him to accept his guilt.
Stewart, 62, son of PDL founder Sir Robertson Stewart and husband of New Zealand Fashion Week owner Pieter Stewart, was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison in February after being found guilty of five charges of indecency, one of sodomy and one of rape.
The offending occurred from 1968 to 1974 when Stewart was in his 20s and the victim was aged eight to 14 years.
The Stewart family recently hired private detective and former police detective inspector Dave Haslett to help prove Stewart's innocence.
But the victim's supporters said Stewart should "accept the facts" and the guilty verdicts.
In a statement released today by the Stewart family said they have been the victim of "countless slurs" by some members of the victim's family.
"We have sat quietly and resisted the temptation to express our views but we have lost patience, particularly with one member of the claimant's family who has taken it upon himself to bully his own family members as well as making insulting and slanderous comments about us," they said.
"This person chooses to hide behind name suppression orders to take pot shots at us."
The family said it had never wavered from its united support for Peter Stewart and had the right to seek justice.
It said even members of the claimant's family agreed that justice needed to be done and one member of the claimant's family had been quoted in the press as saying that "Peter is innocent of all charges and it is the claimant who should be imprisoned".
The victim's family said yesterday the judicial system had worked.
"Normal people who have any conscience would do their best to set the peace. Stewart doesn't have any decency nor guts to do the right thing.
"He sits in prison feeling sorry for himself when he has been responsible for all that has happened, but won't even accept the responsibility for his own actions."
- NZPA
