‘Don’t say anything or I’ll sack your dad’

A rapist who ensured the silence of his victims for more than 40 years with threats to fire their father has been jailed for four years.

Noel Edward Thomas Williams,

70, of Huntly, was convicted of offending against two sisters while he was a supervisor in 1972 and

1973.

Williams was jailed by Judge Chris McGuire when he appeared in the Hamilton District Court via audio-video link from prison yesterday, on charges of raping a girl between the ages of 12 and 16; and one charge of indecently assaulting a girl under 12.

He had been found guilty of both of those charges at a jury trial in Hamilton earlier this year.

Williams had befriended the family of his victims and he had attacked the two sisters as they were in their beds while he was staying overnight.

He threatened both with firing their father if they told anyone what he had done.

Those threats worked for the following 42 years.

They only came to light when the two sisters shared their stories at a family gathering in 2014 and realised they had a shared history of abuse by the same person.

Hearing her little sister’s account of her assault was the catalyst for the older sibling to go to the police and report the rape.

In a victim impact statement read in part to the court by Judge McGuire, the older victim told of the ‘‘hurt and pain and anger’’ of finding out what had happened to her sister.

On the night Williams attacked her, the girl had gone to bed but had been woken when he stole into her room and put his hand over her mouth, telling her that if she breathed a word of what he was doing, he would have her father sacked.

He then raped her.

She had gone on to suffer years of depression, anxiety and panic attacks.

However, now that she had had her day in court and justice was being done, she had started on the path to healing with the help of counselling.

‘‘I will walk with my head held high,’’ she said in the statement.

The younger victim had a similar story of both the sexual assault and its aftermath.

She had lived ‘‘a happy and carefree life’’ up until the night she was assaulted.

Years later she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Although she had ‘‘to fight the demons every day to stay sane’’ she had decided to ultimately forgive Williams for what he had done to her.

Williams’ counsel Sasha Nepe said he had been awarded the British Empire Medal for his subsequent services to the community in Papua New Guinea in 2004. He had also acted as the ‘‘master of the lodge’’ for a branch of the Masons and had overseen numerous community fundraising initiatives, including raising tens of thousands of dollars for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Nepe said her client had maintained his innocence throughout the court proceedings. His sex with the older girl was consensual, he claimed, while his indecent assault of the younger one simply didn’t happen.

Williams was now suffering from health problems including emphysema and fungal infections, she said.

McGuire, who was also appearing via audio-video link from the Manukau District Court, castigated Williams.

‘‘It’s almost stock standard that when this happens to children of this age they suppress it. They do it because their world would fall apart, and for a child this is the last thing that is wanted.

‘‘Their own home was the one place where they were entitled to feel safe. You took that safety away from them.’’

Williams had proved he was not entirely a bad person with his subsequent good deeds, the judge said.

‘‘All of us have the capacity for good and evil. You let yourself down graphically when you offended against these two girls.’’

A pre-sentence report had found Williams to be at low risk of reoffending, but with high risk of harm to others.

Significantly, he had expressed no remorse.

Accounting for both victims, Judge McGuire took a starting point of six years in prison.

Factoring in his otherwise clean criminal record, his age and health issues, and his good work in Papua New Guinea and with the Masons knocked a third off that sentence - reducing it to four years.