After sitting next to a schoolgirl on a bus, a 67-year-old man asked her what she would do if someone tried to rape her.
Then, Owen Frank McMinn put his hand on the 14-year-old’s thigh and insisted: “Just let it happen.”
On Monday, the Hamilton District Court heard the teen, wearing her school uniform, boarded a bus at the Hamilton Transport Centre at 1.40pm on March 28 last year.
Eight minutes later it stopped on Anzac Parade to pick up more passengers, including McMinn.
Despite there only being about 25 passengers on the bus, he sat directly next to the victim.
He started talking with her about school and offering life advice. Then the conversation took a turn.
McMinn asked if she knew what she would do if someone tried to rape her, at which point he put his hand on her lower thigh, causing her to freeze with shock and to feel “gross”.
He then started pressing the victim, asking her what she would do if someone grabbed her. She eventually replied that she didn’t know.
McMinn responded by giving her advice about self-defence, while moving his hand further up her leg.
He continued to ask the teen about what she would do if someone tried to rape her.
When she said she didn’t know, McMinn told her to “just let it happen and that it would be faster to run away with no pants on”.
The bus then came to the victim’s stop and he stood up allowing her to leave.
When later spoken to by police, McMinn admitted sitting next to the victim and asking her the question about rape. But he denied putting his hand on her.
In court yesterday, he appeared for sentencing on one charge of indecent assault.
At the hearing, Judge Noel Cocurullo labelled McMinn’s comments as “quite inappropriate” before noting “troubling” comments in a pre-sentence report where he stated he only pleaded guilty as a “plea of convenience because it would put your dwelling in jeopardy for you”.
However, he noted that a guilty plea means by law he accepted he had done this “serious offending”.
“It is concerning that you go further and not only suggest in the pre-sentence report that this is a plea of convenience but you say, against your guilty plea, that you did not touch this young woman’s thigh and that she is lying.
“My only conclusion about that could be, firstly, [you have] completely and utterly no remorse for your guilty plea behaviour and secondly a high sense of entitlement that, really, your view is to be preferred over hers, notwithstanding that in a court of law you have pleaded guilty and therefore at law accept this serious offending.”
In deciding whether to put him on the Child Sex Offender (CSO) register, the judge noted the vulnerability of the victim, the public place where it happened, and the age disparity.
While he had concerns about issuing an intensive supervision sentence, given McMinn’s “distorted view of what happened”, he couldn’t serve an electronically monitored sentence due to health issues and he couldn’t wear an e-bracelet on his ankle.
The judge made an order registering McMinn on the CSO and sentenced him to intensive supervision for two years.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.
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