{"id":25158,"date":"2025-09-16T04:45:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/25158\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T04:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:45:06","slug":"rotorua-man-admits-taking-girl-3-with-intent-to-have-sexual-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/25158\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotorua: Man admits taking girl, 3, with intent to have sexual connection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tekuru\u2018s lawyer, Scott Mills, entered Tekuru\u2019s guilty plea at today\u2019s appearance.<\/p>\n

Mills suggested the court consider allocating a 90-minute slot for sentencing because of \u201ca number of complicating features\u201d.<\/p>\n

Judge Anna Skellern agreed to this.<\/p>\n

Mills said there were two \u201cvery helpful and thorough\u201d Section 38 reports – a report to check if a person is mentally fit to stand trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m content that they have what I need to make a submission that I need to make, but whether the court thinks that a sentencing 38 report would assist the court … \u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Skellern said she believed the court \u201cprobably\u201d had what it needed, and said Tekuru would be remanded in custody for sentencing on January 23, 2026.<\/p>\n

She directed a pre-sentence report and no additional Section 38 reports.<\/p>\n

The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.<\/p>\n

Megan Wilson<\/a> is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tekuru\u2018s lawyer, Scott Mills, entered Tekuru\u2019s guilty plea at today\u2019s appearance. Mills suggested the court consider allocating a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25490,16489,1763,20388,4058,9539,8912,6868,305,25491,5158,111,43,139,69,1327,17703,4758,1961,61,1455,102],"class_list":["post-25158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-25490","tag-admits","tag-article","tag-connection","tag-contains","tag-content","tag-distressing","tag-girl","tag-have","tag-intent","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rotorua","tag-sexual","tag-taking","tag-this","tag-to","tag-warning","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25158","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=25158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}