Hastings<\/a>.<\/p>\nThings went well for a while, but the trial was told Pira began abusing her when his wife went away. <\/p>\n
![\"Thomas]()
Thomas Tama Koroheke Pira was sentenced in the Napier District Court. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
The physical violence was often accompanied by verbal abuse, and by locking her outside the house. <\/p>\n
Pira tried to have sex with her, leading to the charge of attempted rape.<\/p>\n
He asked his daughter to perform oral sex on him. She complied, believing that she had no choice.<\/p>\n
From then on, she was forced to perform oral sex more often. When she refused, she said she was given a \u201cfat hiding\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beatings became more constant and non-stop and a lot more severe every time,\u201d the woman said in a victim impact statement she read to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne beating stood out to me and that was, with every hit, my dad would say, \u2018You remind me of your maggot-faced mother\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is where I came to the conclusion, it\u2019s not really about me. I\u2019m not doing anything wrong. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the abuse] must have been because he couldn\u2019t accept I looked like my mum and she never waited for him. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was years ago and no excuse for him to cause the extent of damage and lifetime of trauma that he caused me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Collins said that Pira had dominated his daughter \u201cphysically and emotionally\u201d, imposed his will on her and used her for sexual gratification. <\/p>\n
He noted that Pira continued to protest his innocence, but that carried little weight when, on the violence and threatening to kill charges, there was \u201cabsolutely no defence whatsoever\u201d after the woman covertly recorded him abusing her and took photos of her injuries. <\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s ordeal was detailed to a jury of six men and six women during a four-day trial in early July.<\/p>\n
It was the second time that the woman had taken the witness stand. An earlier trial had to be abandoned when Pira became ill and was admitted to hospital.<\/p>\n
Pira\u2019s first sentencing date two weeks ago was also abandoned because he was ill.<\/p>\n
When the court was told this week that Pira was once again ill and not at court, Judge Collins adjourned the hearing so that options could be explored to sentence him, even if it required an audio-visual link to his hospital bed.<\/p>\n
In the end, that proved unnecessary, as Pira was brought to court in person three hours later, wearing a surgical mask. <\/p>\n
Former foster father tipped off police<\/p>\n
The jury trial was told the abuse ended after the woman\u2019s former foster father called police out of concern following communication between them on Facebook Messenger. <\/p>\n
Officers went to the Hastings house to do a \u201cwelfare check\u201d and, when Pira became aggressive, they arrested him.<\/p>\n
The young woman then told the police about the abuse she had suffered and how frightened she had become while living at the house. <\/p>\n
She played them recordings she had secretly made on her phone of Pira verbally abusing her, calling her a \u201cmaggot b****\u201d, and saying he would kill her.<\/p>\n
Despite the abuse, the woman wished Pira well as she concluded her impact statement in court.<\/p>\n
But turning to face him as he sat in the dock, she said he had lost her respect and the \u201cprivilege to be part of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day I hope I can heal over this and have a happy family, but that\u2019s a long time away,\u201d the woman told Pira.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so hard to block you out of my head,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s scary and traumatising.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n
Join the 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":"\u201cSomeone I could go to about my problems, someone I could trust with my life. Not someone who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1903,95,14032,13845,2082,5194,42,14641,5158,43,1118,284590,17703,113,40,38,41,39,20424,1530],"class_list":["post-577988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-abuse","tag-and","tag-daughter","tag-eight","tag-for","tag-hastings","tag-headlines","tag-jailed","tag-man","tag-news","tag-of","tag-pira","tag-sexual","tag-thomas","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-violent","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577988","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=577988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}