Convicted rapist guilty of assaults
A convicted rapist accused of indecently assaulting girls at a Queenstown swimming pool has been found guilty on 10 charges.
Benjamin Barrie Bradbury, 43, was found guilty by a jury after a trial in the Invercargill District Court on 10 of the 13 indecent assault charges he faced.
The charges related to incidents at Alpine Aqualand, at the Queenstown Events Centre.
Interim name suppression for Bradbury lapsed after the verdict.
Judge Mark Callaghan remanded Bradbury in custody to reappear in court today to decide whether sentencing will be heard in the district court or the high court. In 2004, media reported Bradbury committed a knifepoint rape of a 15-year-old girl he plucked off the street and he was jailed for 13 years.
The offence happened as the girl was waiting for her father to pick her up in the early hours of the morning in Mairangi Bay.
Bradbury, a 28-year-old labourer at the time, was found guilty by a district court jury on charges of rape, abduction, indecent assault and possession of a knife.
In the High Court at Auckland at the time of sentencing, Mark Davies, for the Crown, unsuccessfully sought preventive detention for Bradbury, whose offending occurred eight months after his release from prison for indecently assaulting a 6-year-old girl. Bradbury, he said, committed random sex assaults on several young women. The weekend before the rape he had indecently assaulted three other teenage girls.
Justice John Priestley told Bradbury that if he ever offended again he could be locked away for the rest of his life.
He said that Bradbury tended to regard women who were strangers as objects for his sexual gratification.
He had no qualms about interfering with the young women, and a week later snatched another victim off a street. He forced her into his house, made her strip and raped her while threatening her with a knife.
The judge said that Bradbury testified at his trial that the sex was consensual, though he had never met the girl before, but the jury disbelieved his fabricated story.
Peter Kaye, defending, said that Bradbury maintained his innocence.