File image. © Andrew Bardwell
An 11-year-old girl is showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder after repeated rapes by her father, who was today jailed for more than a decade.
The 31-year-old father – his name is suppressed to protect the victim – was jailed for 10 years for the sex offending against the girl, and an additional six months for repeated assaults on a woman.
The man reported the sex offending himself after he was arrested for the assaults early this year.
The three rapes and four incidents of unlawful sexual connection occurred in Christchurch last year when the girl was aged 10.
Christchurch District Court Judge Alistair Garland, who jailed him, said the girl was now showing signs of PTSD at home and at her school. The mother was still in shock after finding out what the man had done, and it had devastated her.
He said the man would have a better understanding of the terrible harm he had caused when he went through the Kia Marama programme for child sex offenders in prison.
He had pleaded guilty to all the charges, including assaulting the woman, damaging the walls of a Housing New Zealand property, and threatening to kill the woman. The assaults including strangling her.
The judge said the sex offending had been opportunistic, except for one occasion when the man had taken the girl to a park in the early hours of the morning to offend against her.
“The victim was extremely vulnerable because of her age, and because you were her father and in a position of authority,” said the judge. “She was entitled to be protected by you, not abused as you have done.”
The man has 38 previous convictions including burglary, violence, theft, receiving stolen property, fraud, driving offences, and breaching court orders. He was assessed as a high risk of re-offending and causing harm to others.
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