Stepfather jailed for indecencies

About the same time he suffered a debilitating workplace injury, a Dannevirke man began indecently touching his stepdaughter.

But he was caught and has been sent to prison for two years and five months.

The man, in his fifties, has name suppression to protect the identity of his stepdaughter. He married the girl's mother in 1998.

The two arrived in New Zealand from overseas two years later to live with the man in Hawke's Bay.

In 2004, the man damaged his spine when he fell off a roof at work – it was about that time that he began to touch his stepdaughter inappropriately, Judge Nevin Dawson said in the Palmerston North District Court yesterday.

The victim was about eight at the time, and once when she was in a car with the man, he touched her genitalia.

About four years ago the family moved to Dannevirke. Some time after the move, the man touched his stepdaughter on her bottom while her mother was at work.

The stepdaughter told him to stop, and he told her not to tell anybody about the touching.

Then one morning the man was in the kitchen with his stepdaughter while the mother ate breakfast in a different room. The mother heard her daughter say "don't touch me". The victim said the man had touched her on the bottom, to which the man said something like "her butt was in the way".

After the victim told her school friends, her school found out what had happened and contacted Child, Youth and Family. Only then were the police involved.

Crown prosecutor Esme Killeen said the man's offending was premeditated and a breach of trust, while defence lawyer Eric Forster said prison would be a "harsh environment" for the man, who cannot walk more than a few steps unaided.

But Judge Dawson thought any community-based sentence would be too light on the man, who was convicted of indecent assault on a girl under 12 and of performing an indecent act on a girl aged 12 to 16.

"You are a person who should have been providing protection for [the victim] as a stepfather, not offending against her."

The victim's mother was in the public gallery supporting the man.