Sex charges extend dealer’s prison time
A Northland man who previously lived a double life as a drug lord has been jailed for two years and 10 months for historic child sex abuse.
Maxwell John Beckham, 74, appeared for sentence in Whangārei District Court yesterday on three charges of indecently assaulting girls aged under 12, relating to two victims.
The court heard that Beckham’s “evil” had ruined the young girls’ lives — they were 8 and 11 when the abuse occurred — but now as women, they were in court to deliver their emotional victim impact statements and to tell the man who had ruined their lives so far that his evil actions no longer ruled their existence and they would move on.
The sentence imposed by Judge Gene Tomlinson is cumulative to a prison term of 19 years and two months Beckham is serving for major drug and other offending, which is due to end in 2028.
Yesterday’s sentencing related to charges laid in 2019 when two women each made complaints Beckham indecently touched them years earlier.
One of the women alleged two incidents in which Beckham touched her genitals when she was aged about 11. The other said he touched her breasts when she was aged about 8 or 9 — Beckham was in his 50s at the time.
Each gave evidence of him making a similarly lewd remark to them during the incidents, which happened in 2003 or 2004.
Judge Tomlinson said there was no doubt enormous emotional harm had been caused to the two girls by Beckham’s abuse and no sentence he imposed would adequately reflect the harm done.
He said the jury rejected Beckham’s defence that any contact with the girls was innocent and did not include any sexual activity.
He accepted that Beckham’s drug addictions were to cover the grief and pain he felt after his son drowned, but because he had abused one of the girls before that happened it could not be used as an excuse.
The judge set a starting point of three years’ for Beckham’s abuse, saying he was not allowed any discounts for a guilty plea or previous good character. He reduced this by 5 per cent because of Beckham’s poor health and factors raised in a cultural report prepared for the sentencing.
Judge Tomlinson also ordered Beckham to pay $2000 in emotional harm reparation to the two victims. The judge said the victims did not seek the payment — and may reject it as “blood money” — but he felt he needed to impose the penalty to at least reflect that such harm had been done.
He said it would be up to the Parole Board when Beckham appeared before them in the future to determine if it would be safe to release him back into the community.
Beckham was jailed in 2011 for 13-and-a-half years after a High Court trial on serious drugs charges. The Court of Appeal subsequently upped the sentence to 18 years’ imprisonment.
The sentence included a 50 per cent minimum non-parole period and was on top of a jail term of seven-and-a-half years Beckham was already serving for kidnapping charges.
Beckham took his case on the drug matters to the Supreme Court but was unsuccessful in arguing police had illegally intercepted phone calls he had with his lawyer, giving prosecutors unfair insights into his case.
During his Auckland trial, it was revealed Beckham was the kingpin of a methamphetamine syndicate. Detectives found $865,720 hidden in a vehicle at his home when he was arrested, while assets and cash worth more than $10 million were restrained.
Beckham previously co-owned the ITM store at Mangonui, ran a property development company, established an olive orchard and once owned a large commercial fishing fleet.