84 year old jailed for 4 years for sexually abusing boys

A Napier man who diaried sexual offences against boys and later admitted them in court has become possibly the oldest people ever sent to jail in New Zealand.

The man, who turns 85 in April and whose name is suppressed from publication, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison when he appeared before Judge Tony Adeane in Napier District Court today.

The eldest previously sentenced to jail were aged, according to Court records, while among cases in Hawke's Bay Courts was the sentencing of Donald Macdonald-Dalkieth to five years and four months at the age of 81 in March 2010.

That sentence was upheald by the Court of Appeal, and at the age of 84 remains in prison with parole having just been denied.

Commenting on grooming aspects of the latest case which involved three complainants, Judge Adeane decided against an offer of $12,000 reparation. Offered by the defendant through counsel Russell Fairbrother, it was recommended by Crown prosecutor Steve Manning that it go to the major victim, violated repeatedly from about the age of eight to what the judge said was "well into" the teenage years.

There were 13 charges, some of which were admitted just after the Crown's opening address at a trial, as the major victim was waiting in another room to give evidence, which was not required as a result of the reversal.

Most of the 13 charges against two of the victims were representative of repeated offending, which began with the major victim when the man was about 71 years old.

They involved having unlawful sexual connection, and indecent acts and indecent assaults, variously involving digital penetration, oral sexual sex acts and other abuse. The one charge related to the the third victim involved an act of kissing.

Mr Russell Fairbrother was not surprised by the sentence, although he was by the rejection of the reparation proposal on behalf of the man who apart from his arrest and seven months in custody on remand had never been to jail before, and who apart from the offences had otherwise led an employed, blameless and respected life.