{"id":171416,"date":"2025-12-07T03:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T03:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171416\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T03:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T03:11:07","slug":"tauranga-man-imprisoned-for-rape-of-his-8-year-old-cousin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171416\/","title":{"rendered":"Tauranga man imprisoned for rape of his 8-year-old cousin"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the summary of facts, he would sneak into the girl\u2019s bedroom at night, often telling her he was \u201cscared to sleep on [his] own\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There, he would sometimes lie on top of her while showing her pornography on his tablet.<\/p>\n

At other times, he would remove his pants and lie in her bed, kissing and licking her neck.<\/p>\n

His offending began in early 2021<\/a>, and the last occasion was in April 2024.<\/p>\n

Sometime during that period, he touched her genital area over the top of her clothes when she was in the living room.<\/p>\n

On a further occasion, he indecently assaulted her while she was showering.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe man received a sentence indication in the Tauranga District Court in August, and was jailed this month for four and a half years. <\/p>\n

Sometime in 2023, he raped her in the lounge, while her father and siblings were home but not nearby. <\/p>\n

Sometime between March and April 2024, he indecently assaulted the girl in her bedroom and, in early April 2024, he raped her when her two sisters were in the bedroom.<\/p>\n

And around the same time that year, the girl entered his sleepout and initiated sexual intercourse, which he did not attempt to stop.<\/p>\n

\u2018We welcomed you into our home\u2019<\/p>\n

The man, now 22, pleaded guilty to three charges of sexual violation by rape and four charges of indecently assaulting a child, having received a sentence indication in the Tauranga District Court <\/a>in August.<\/p>\n

Judge Melinda Mason adopted a starting point of eight and a half years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n

At the recent sentencing, the victim\u2019s mother read a victim impact statement in which she spoke of her anger and grief over the loss of innocence suffered by her daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am angry at you because we trusted you to be among our children, your cousins, and you ripped that trust to shreds … we welcomed you into our home, not knowing the intentions you had.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was also angry that the man\u2019s own \u201cbeautiful daughter grows up without her father\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt also saddens me because we will always love you, but only from afar. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this time you spend between four walls allows you to reflect on every decision that you made, right down to stripping my daughter of her innocence, because what you did to her is not fair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly pray that someday we will come to forgive you.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in return, you seek forgiveness from your cousins, myself, your uncle, and especially the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Mild cognitive impairment\u2019 revealed in psychological report<\/p>\n

In sentencing the man, Judge Mason acknowledged the impact the offending had not only on the victim, but on the wider family.<\/p>\n

She applied a 25% discount for the man\u2019s guilty plea.<\/p>\n

She said a psychological report filed ahead of sentencing discussed cognitive issues, which related to the man\u2019s background. <\/p>\n

Crown prosecutor Laura Clay said she had been troubled by the level of discount sought on what was a \u201cmild cognitive impairment, foetal alcohol syndrome and a relatively low IQ\u201d.<\/p>\n

She noted that some of the issues raised in the report, which included the man\u2019s lack of understanding about his offending, seemed to be \u201caggravating in terms of the risk that the defendant does pose at the end of the sentence\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, she accepted this would be a matter for the Parole Board to consider.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s lawyer, Craig Horsley, clarified that the 20% discount sought was a global discount, which accounted for his personal circumstances, his youth at the time and lack of previous convictions.<\/p>\n

Clay said she couldn\u2019t take issue with the 20%, if \u201ca large amount of that is a reduction in terms of youth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Judge Mason said that, when she looked at all the factors, a 20% discount was appropriate.<\/p>\n

This mostly reflected his youth, but also the matters traversed in the psychological report, which demonstrated that perhaps he \u201c[didn\u2019t] have the ability to think as carefully or fairly as some other people of your age\u201d.<\/p>\n

The man received an end sentence of four and a half years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the summary of facts, he would sneak into the girl\u2019s bedroom at night, often telling her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15122,1903,2511,58250,181,8912,2082,293,54106,51030,5158,111,43,139,69,1118,34458,17703,427,1227,1961,1455],"class_list":{"0":"post-171416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-8yearold","9":"tag-abuse","10":"tag-child","11":"tag-cousin","12":"tag-details","13":"tag-distressing","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-his","16":"tag-imprisoned","17":"tag-includes","18":"tag-man","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-of","24":"tag-rape","25":"tag-sexual","26":"tag-story","27":"tag-tauranga","28":"tag-this","29":"tag-warning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}