Bay of Plenty<\/a>, where he lived with his mum, the woman travelled to the region with a friend.<\/p>\nOn November 1, the boy\u2019s mum reported him missing.<\/p>\n
The next day, the woman had intercourse with the boy in her car.<\/p>\n
He was found by police with the woman in her car on November 6 and was taken back to his mother.<\/p>\n
But later that day, he was again reported missing from his mum\u2019s address.<\/p>\n
The woman had managed to get accommodation in Tauranga and told the occupant the boy was her 16-year-old brother.<\/p>\n
But the next morning, the occupant noticed the pair had slept in the same bed and the boy had \u201clove bite\u201d marks on his neck. <\/p>\n
Police were told where the woman was and went to the address.<\/p>\n
The woman claimed the boy wasn\u2019t there but, with permission from the occupant, they searched the address and found him.<\/p>\n
Police noted the marks on his neck and that he had all his possessions with him, and returned him to his mum.<\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s charges related to numerous instances of sexual intercourse that occurred between November 1 and 7, 2024, at various locations in the Tauranga area.<\/p>\n
\u2018Extremely concerning\u2019 comments made by woman in pre-sentence report<\/p>\n
At sentencing on Tuesday, Judge Melinda Mason said the aggravating features of the case included breach of trust, inherent in a situation where the victim was the woman\u2019s stepson, and she had been in a parental role towards him for a \u201cnumber of years\u201d.<\/p>\n
The boy had also provided a victim impact statement, explaining he now has no contact with his father and there are so many complications he \u201cdoesn\u2019t know how to deal with\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge said the boy wanted the woman to \u201cstay away from him\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this, he says, includes your son [which the woman shares with the victim\u2019s father], and of course, that\u2019s disappointing as well, because obviously that\u2019s another impact on a person that\u2019s innocent from this offending,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
The judge noted the woman had already been dealt with by the court over one incident with the boy.<\/p>\n
He had initially only disclosed one instance of abuse, which led to the woman being charged with sexual connection with a young person, and indecent assault. She had immediately pleaded guilty and been sentenced to one year\u2019s intensive supervision.<\/p>\n
However, more offending was later disclosed, detailing further instances of sexual intercourse over the same time period, leading to further charges.<\/p>\n
All the offending occurred over about a month, with the judge noting a degree of planning, because the boy had \u201crun away from home\u201d and there were addresses and locations the woman had set up for her offending.<\/p>\n
There was an agreed starting point between the Crown and defence of three years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Alexandra Dawick sought a discount for remorse, but this was opposed by the Crown.<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Hannah Speight said while the woman had filed a remorse letter, the contents of a pre-sentence report were \u201cextremely concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey indicate that there is, in fact, no remorse,\u201d Speight said.<\/p>\n
Dawick said while she accepted there were \u201cconcerning comments\u201d made in the report, more weight should be placed on the psychological report.<\/p>\n
The judge noted issues raised in the report, including that the woman\u2019s mother had suffered chronic depression, leading to a degree of neglect in the woman\u2019s upbringing.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d had low engagement with school, because of minimal supervision and encouragement, and had dropped out early without qualifications.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d had an early introduction to sexual activity where she was subjected to the behaviour of older males, and had also had early exposure to alcohol and drugs.<\/p>\n
The judge said she had some \u201cnormalised issues around age discrepancy with sexual relationships\u201d, noting the victim\u2019s father, with whom she remains in a relationship, was significantly older than her.<\/p>\n
She had PTSD after sexual assaults, and mental health issues that included a history of self-harm, cannabis-use disorder and a borderline personality disorder.<\/p>\n
The judge accepted that all of those issues warranted a 10% discount, with a 5% discount for youth.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t accept there should be a discount for remorse beyond what was captured by a guilty plea discount of 20%.<\/p>\n
The woman was given a seven-month reduction because of time spent on electronically monitored bail.<\/p>\n
She received an end sentence of 16 months\u2019 imprisonment, which meant she was automatically registered on the Child Sex Offenders Register.<\/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
Join NZ Herald\u2019s Open Justice team for Case by Case<\/a>, a video and podcast series examining the disputes and decisions making headlines across New Zealand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI feel like I failed as a mother and couldn\u2019t protect my son,\u201d she said. Her son now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51973,9092,868,8912,2082,111,43,139,69,1118,28703,5502,4056,5161,17703,22639,427,1961,1455,102,1354,4741],"class_list":["post-559712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-13yearold","tag-against","tag-deals","tag-distressing","tag-for","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-offending","tag-partner","tag-person","tag-sentenced","tag-sexual","tag-son","tag-story","tag-this","tag-warning","tag-with","tag-woman","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559712","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=559712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}