Actor faces year’s home detention

Actor Lee Rene Naufahu has been sentenced to a year’s home detention for sex assaults on female students.

Naufahu, 47, was sentenced in the Auckland District Court yesterday after pleading guilty to six indecent assault charges in September.

Judge Robert Ronayne said home detention, rather than a prison term, would better suit Naufahu’s efforts towards rehabilitation.

The former Shortland Street actor initially denied the offending and his admission came a week before he was due to go on trial. The Crown dropped 13 other charges.

The offending was between 2011 to 2013 at his Auckland acting classes.

Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis told the court Naufahu had planned and premeditated the grooming of his victims, which added to the “scale of the offending and the intrusiveness”.

Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield said his client was a “passionate actor” whose enthusiasm for the craft became personal and the lines blurred.

Mansfield rejected the claim that Naufahu had groomed his victims.

Ronayne said Naufahu’s “manipulative nature was apparent” and the victims had felt shame and guilt.

“They of course have no reason to feel any guilt whatsoever, you are the guilty one,” the judge told the actor.

After the sentencing Naufahu said: “I am relieved that this prosecution is now behind the complainants and myself. We can all now move forward and heal . . . I now realise that my behaviour at that time wasn’t always professional and appropriate, even though then I thought it was.”