Violated in own bed

A Palmerston North woman who lives alone was asleep in bed when a man barged into her bedroom and subjected her to a terrifying sexual attack.

It wasn’t the first time Paul Nicholls broke into the property. The 52-year-old had previously stolen a handbag from inside the woman’s house and electronic monitoring data revealed he had visited another five times, scooping it from the outside.

One night in April last year he again stole a handbag, but this time he went further, indecently assaulting and violating the 69-year-old woman. ‘‘I was asleep and relaxed and suddenly he was there, my wrists held tightly and his weight on me,’’ the woman said in a statement read to the High Court at Wellington yesterday.

There, appearing via audio-visual link from Manawatu¯ Prison, Nicholls was sentenced to 81⁄ years’ jail, with a minimum term of 5 years and 8months, for the home invasion and related offending.

The Crown asked for Nicholls to receive preventive detention, but Justice Rebecca Ellis said ‘‘by a narrow margin’’ she decided not to impose an indefinite sentence.

Nicholls’ latest offending began when he entered the woman’s home – the lock on her front door was broken – and stole her handbag, containing $750 of items. Nicholls used a bank card 12 times at a service station and supermarket, racking up buys of about $430.

Later that week he returned to the house and broke in the same way, taking a second bag, containing personal items and $90.

Then he went to the woman’s bedroom, where she was asleep. He held her down while indecently assaulting and sexually violating her.

The woman suffered an injured wrist and emotional trauma.

‘‘Unsurprisingly, the victim still finds it difficult to sleep at night and struggles with the reminders that come with still living in the same house,’’ the judge told Nicholls.

‘‘You attacked in the place where the victim was entitled to feel most safe and you have changed that place forever for her ... You made her, albeit briefly, a prisoner in her own home.’’

The judge said women should feel safe in their homes and crimes such as Nicholls’ robbed them of that chance.

The court heard alcohol or drug abuse played a part in Nicholls’ offending. He has a 32-year criminal history and was a member of the Storm Troopers gang.

He was a wha¯ngai child and had only recently disclosed he was sexually abused when younger by a relative of his adoptive father.

From 2008-2016, Nicholls was in prison for similar offending to which he’s now been jailed and while inside completed the most intensive treatment programme in New Zealand for adult sexual offenders, although he recalls little of it.

Upon release he was unable to return to Hamilton, so was living an isolated existence in Palmerston North, defence lawyer Esme Killeen said.

Nicholls has a son and daughter from whom he was estranged, but Killeen said his son was in the same prison as him.

A cultural report before the court spoke of how Nicholls had no connection with his family, iwi or hapu, but was keen to rebuild one.

Nicholls admitted two charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, one of indecent assault and two each of burglary and dishonestly using a document.