Christchurch District Court<\/a> heard her statement at Brook\u2019s sentencing.<\/p>\n\u201cI often feel uncomfortable around others now. I am disengaged, I often break down in tears,\u201d she told the now 50-year-old defendant. <\/p>\n
\u201cI turned to self-harm … sometimes when I have flashbacks, those things return.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need closure. I will never forget what you did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The offending occurred a few years ago and she hated that the road to justice had taken so long.<\/p>\n
However, she said that in the meantime, what had happened to her had given her the determination to obtain a qualification in a field where she could help others.<\/p>\n
Judge Duncan Harvey said the case was a tragedy for everyone involved.<\/p>\n
According to the summary, the victim was known to Brook, who had been drinking on the day of the offending.<\/p>\n
That evening, they were staying at the same Canterbury house, and the victim was sleeping in the lounge.<\/p>\n
She woke to find him naked from the waist down and masturbating.<\/p>\n
He approached her and she fled to a bathroom and closed the door. <\/p>\n
After some time, she went back to sleep in the lounge.<\/p>\n
But Brook returned and sexually violated her. <\/p>\n
Judge Harvey said it was only when the victim used Brook\u2019s name, and repeatedly told him to stop, that he left her alone.<\/p>\n
When he was later interviewed by police, he said he had mistakenly tried to kiss the victim.<\/p>\n
Judge Harvey said reports showed Brook did not accept he was guilty of the offending and blamed alcohol, while appearing also to have no remorse.<\/p>\n
The judge said the victim was vulnerable and the offending had not taken place in a \u201cfleeting moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt involved a number of events; your offending was prolonged, the scale of it was an aggravating feature.\u201d <\/p>\n
The judge also did not accept Brook\u2019s intoxication was a mitigating factor.<\/p>\n
Following a starting point of three and a half years\u2019 imprisonment, Judge Harvey applied a 35% discount for Brook\u2019s previous good character, his effort to address his alcohol abuse, and for his $15,000 offer of emotional harm reparation to the victim.<\/p>\n
Brook was then sentenced to two years and three months in prison.<\/p>\n
Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently he was editor of the Hauraki-Coromandel Post, based in Whangamat\u0101. He was previously deputy editor of the Cook Islands News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI felt unable to stand up for myself. You dragged me through some of the toughest times of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9980,65968,8126,2082,6868,111,43,139,69,1118,5161,17703,10706,64011],"class_list":["post-87052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-adam","tag-brook","tag-canterbury","tag-for","tag-girl","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-sentenced","tag-sexual","tag-teenage","tag-violation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87052","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=87052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}