Guilty verdicts in abuse trial

A 46-year-old man already jailed for more than 13 years for child sex offending has now been convicted of sexually abusing two more young girls.

He was found guilty of four charges in a verdict delivered by Judge Alistair Garland in the Christchurch District Court yesterday, after evidence was heard over three days last week.

All four victims of the man’s offending were girls aged between five and nine when the incidents took place, Judge Garland noted. He had been told of the earlier convictions and the details of the offending as propensity evidence in the latest trial.

The defence in the trial was that the incidents had never happened. However Judge Alistair Garland found there had been no collusion between the two latest complainants, nor between them and the two girls in the earlier trial.

The man had denied indecent assaults on the two girls, and three charges of raping one of the girls. Judge Garland found one charge of indecent assault proved, but acquitted the man on the other charge, saying there was a possibility the touching of the girl’s thighs in bed was accidental, and there was no evidence the man was awake when it happened, nor to suggest it was sexually motivated.

He found all

three

rape allegations had been proved.

The man is already in custody but no sentencing date has yet been set for the latest convictions.

Judge Garland said he was satisfied there was no likelihood the two girls in the latest trial were influenced by what was told to them about the man’s other offending.

He saw ‘‘real similarities’’ between the evidence at the trial and the propensity evidence called by Crown, which showed the man’s sexual interest in young females. He accepted evidence that it was quite normal for children to delay disclosing sexual offending they had suffered.

The delay in this case was ‘‘quite unremarkable’’.

He described one of the victims, now a teenager, as being intelligent and articulate.

He said the second girl was also intelligent and articulate and her evidence was honest, credible, and reliable. She appeared to have a clear memory of each incident.