A 46-year-old man has blamed a brain injury from his days tree-felling for his "failure to recognise proper boundaries" with years of sex offending against two girls.
Judge Graeme Noble told him: "This represents another woeful example of a male misusing his position of trust by exercising power and dominion over defenceless children for the purposes of sexual gratification."
The case was transferred from Blenheim District Court to Christchurch when the man agreed to plead guilty last year. The man's name is not suppressed but it cannot be published because the relationship would identify his victims. He had pleaded guilty to four charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, one of assaulting a child, and two of indecent assault.
Defence counsel Paul McMenamin said the man was now appalled by the acts he had committed. The offending amounted to about six relatively isolated incidents over about five years.
He had sustained a mild brain injury while tree-felling in 2001. A doctor's report in 2004 - about the time the offending began - indicated he was "on the verge of a psychotic break".
"I think it can be accepted that the injury has contributed in a significant degree to affect his ability to recognise the proper boundaries," said Mr McMenamin.
Judge Noble said one of the girls was aged between eight and 13 when the offending occurred, and the other was aged 15 and 16 when she was indecently assaulted. The man had got into bed with the younger girl, fondled and digitally penetrated her, and then begged her not to tell her mother.
When she was aged 10 and did tell her mother, the man confronted her and struck her on the head.
The victim impact statement made poignant reading, including the "familiar lack of self-worth of the sexually abused child". One of the girls was having trouble dealing with her peers at school in the small community where she now lived, he said.
Judge Noble allowed a reduction for the guilty pleas and the effects of the brain injury and jailed the man for three years.
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