A Southland man who claimed sex with an underage girl was\u00a0a case of\u00a0\u201cmutual\u00a0attraction\u201d\u00a0has been jailed for more than two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
George\u00a0Omelvena, 25, appeared in the Invercargill District Court yesterday after pleading guilty to three charges of sexual conduct with an under-16, which Judge Mark Williams said\u00a0incorporated \u201cthe full gamut\u201d of violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Counsel Scott Williamson\u00a0stressed\u00a0his client had no criminal history, positive prospects of\u00a0rehabilitation\u00a0and that a sentence of home detention should be imposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the judge\u00a0underscored the \u201cvictim-blaming\u201d attitudes of\u00a0Omelvena\u00a0which arose during an interview with Probation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard the defendant claimed the acts were consensual, that there was \u201cmutual attraction\u201d and even suggested the victim was the instigator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I accept there\u2019s some remorse for what you have done to her, in my view, there\u2019s also a degree of remorse for the position you\u2019ve found yourself in,\u201d Judge Williams said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim read her statement through tears at the hearing\u2019s outset detailing the vast changes in her life since the sexual ordeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0choose panic attacks, flashbacks, or the fear that comes out of nowhere. My life has\u00a0become\u00a0about trying to cope with something that should never have happened to me,\u201d\u00a0she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The teenager had since been diagnosed with PTSD.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not a mistake he\u00a0made,\u00a0this was a choice he made, a choice that has followed me every day,\u201d the girl said. \u201cI am still a\u00a0teenager\u00a0but I will live with this forever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first incident took place in July 2024 when\u00a0Omelvena\u00a0sent the victim a photo of his genitalia over social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When she confronted him and told\u00a0him\u00a0\u201cyou can\u2019t do that\u201d,\u00a0the defendant demanded she remove her clothes, then pulled her on to the bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou wanted it,\u201d he told her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second episode came the following month when\u00a0Omelvena\u00a0woke the girl from her sleep and again violated her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The final trauma occurred in January last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Mary-Jane Thomas stressed the seven-month span across which\u00a0the\u00a0sexual\u00a0abuse took place and the range of acts committed by the defendant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Williams concurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not one-off offending on your\u00a0part,\u00a0it was persistent,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Probation report, the judge said, caused concern.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve\u00a0tried, to some extent, to blame the victim here rather than accepting full responsibility for what you have done,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He pointed to the victim-impact statements as evidence of the harm\u00a0Omelvena\u00a0had caused.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One was also read by the teenager\u2019s mother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who thinks it is acceptable to blame a\u00a0. . .\u00a0child for being the victim of a predator should be ashamed. Yet even now, you continue to act as though you have done nothing wrong. The only person you seem concerned about in all of this is yourself,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you have done has changed our lives forever, and that weight is yours to carry. I hope it haunts you forever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Omelvena\u00a0was jailed for\u00a025 months\u00a0and as a result he was added to the Child Sex Offender Register.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was also ordered to pay the victim $3200.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Southland man who claimed sex with an underage girl was\u00a0a case of\u00a0\u201cmutual\u00a0attraction\u201d\u00a0has been jailed for more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-340204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340204","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=340204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}