Sex assault victims tell of ordeal

Victims of sexual assault have told their abuser how they cut themselves, wanting to escape his actions.

Kurt David Frank was jailed in the New Plymouth District Court on Friday on seven charges, including two of sexual conduct with a child under 12, two of sexual conduct with a young person and two of assaulting a child.

The offending made one victim feel scared, helpless, embarrassed and useless because she could not and did not have the guts to tell anyone, she said in her victim impact statement.

‘‘If I resisted you touching me you would hit me, so letting you do it was better than the hidings, but it made me feel dirty and disgusted,’’ she told the court.

‘‘You are to blame for me cutting myself – my thighs, my wrists and my stomach, trying to escape in an easy way.’’

A second victim told Frank: ‘‘Every time you touched me I wanted to leave this world; I didn’t want to be alive any more,’’ she said.

She told of one occasion when, after being taken to Taranaki Base Hospital after collapsing, she had later fallen asleep.

‘‘When I woke up you had your hands down my shorts. I was so scared so I pretended to be asleep so you wouldn’t hit me if I tried to stop you.’’

She also said she had cut herself as a result of the offending against her.

Frank also offended with physical violence against a young boy, including putting his foot on the child’s head and, on another occasion, lifting the child off the ground by putting his arm under and around the boy’s neck.

The children’s mother labelled the defendant a ‘‘monster’’ and a ‘‘spineless coward’’.

‘‘You have taken my children’s childhoods away from them.’’

Defence lawyer Julian Hannam said his client conceded he had become a monster.

There was history of the man himself being sexually abused, but he did not remember carrying out the sexual offending, Hannam submitted.

Judge Gregory Hikaka commended the victims for their courage in sharing their story in court.

The sexual offending against the young girls happened at a time when they were developing their own identity and sense of place in the world, the judge said.

Hikaka also noted Frank’s ‘‘terrible upbringing’’, and that a brother was serving extended jail time for sexual offending, while another two siblings appeared to have ‘‘weathered the storm’’.

‘‘Even though you have described yourself as a monster, you have confirmed that you have continued a cycle that you grew up with, but you can’t remember the offending against the girls.

‘‘That’s a step that is hard to accept as entirely plausible because of the length of time the offending occurred – over two years – and the number of times it occurred and what I’ve already referred to as a premeditative element.’’

But Judge Hikaka also noted Frank had 36 previous convictions.

Frank was sentenced to four years and two months’ imprisonment.