Child sex abuse ‘groomer’ guilty of historic sex charges
It took a jury of six men and six women just 55 minutes to find Sean Smale unanimously guilty of child sex offences committed more than two decades ago.
As Smale was led from the dock on Wednesday evening the first man to lay a complaint against him shouted ‘‘shame you m ..... f ..... ’’.
A second victim issued a warning to his abuser: ‘‘You deserve everything you get’’.
The unanimous guilty verdicts to six charges he groomed and abused young boys as far back as 1997 came after a three-day trial where the events of 22 years ago, and the ‘gatherings’ Smale hosted for 12 and 13-year-old boys in the early 2000s, all came under the spotlight.
That included admissions from Smale himself, given across a number of recorded police interviews, of the culture of drinking, drug taking and nudity he created at his Rotorua address.
At that time, Smale was 32.
In her closing address Crown prosecutor Anna McConachy said Smale ‘‘engaged in classic grooming behaviour’’.
‘‘In what world is it appropriate for a man his age to be hosting such gatherings every weekend, for young boys to be inebriated . . . It’s sinister.’’
She also pointed to his admission to police he would have as many as six young boys at his house over the weekend because they were ‘‘good company’’.
‘‘Good company? Ladies and gentlemen, they were 12.’’
In one police interview Smale said RTDs were the drink of choice, and he supplied the alcohol as ‘‘they wouldn’t have been able to purchase [it]’’.
‘‘Not huge amounts of alcohol, couldn’t afford huge amounts.’’
He also said he would drink less than the boys, so he could ‘‘keep control’’.
‘‘Make sure no-one was running around the streets. The boys weren’t super pissed . . . not comatose or anything like that.’’
Through a mixture of in person testimony and video recorded interviews it was also clear the toll Smale’s offending had taken on his victims.
One complainant, who spoke to police in 2019 about the abuse he suffered in 1997, told the officer ‘‘this is so difficult’’.
‘‘It’s something that’s horrified me for a long time. I’d got to the point where I’d blanked it out up until about three weeks ago when it all came flooding back.’’
The man said he had questioned his own sexuality ever since the abuse, and even blamed his own father.
‘‘After the event itself I changed completely, sectioned off my mind . . . trying to find my identity. He stripped that away from me, what innocence I had was shattered.
‘‘I’ll never forget his face at that time.’’
The man also revealed he has been in counselling in an effort to ‘‘get back what he (Smale) took’’.
Defence arguments were summed up as Smale’s victims ‘‘lying in slightly different ways for slightly different reasons’’. Much was also made of continued contact after the abuse between Smale and two of his victims, though in his closing remarks Judge Tony Snell warned the jury about that, and the delay in reporting the abuse.
‘‘There is no classic or typical response to sexual abuse,’’ he said.
‘‘No standard response by someone who has been sexually abused towards their abuser.’’
Smale was remanded in custody ahead of a nominal sentence date of May 26.