A 78-year-old Manawatu man has been sentenced to 14 years' in jail for historic sexual offending over three decades against seven victims, including his own children.
The man, who has name suppression to protect the identities of his victims, was sentenced in Palmerston North District Court yesterday.
Judge Les Atkins said the man's failure to take any responsibility for the agony he caused people was "extraordinary".
In a three-week trial last year, a jury found the man guilty of 21 charges including forcing his children to have sex, raping his son's girlfriends and brutally beating his children between 1963 and 1990, the Manawatu Standard reported.
The first complaints were laid in 1974. Further complaints laid with police in 1988 and 1990 but also got nowhere and it was not until January 2009 that he was arrested.
A psychological report said the man, who was married three times and has nine children, had a grandiose sense of self entitlement and psychopathic characteristics.
As Judge Atkins read through the charges the man scoffed as he heard about his unsuccessful attempt to rape his daughter.
At other times he shook his head, or mouthed "bullshit", the paper reported.
His son told him: "You have ruined so many lives and you have shattered me as a person."
"To me you are worse than a killer. A killer leaves his victims dead. You killed us and you kept us living. You killed our hearts, you killed our souls and you killed our spirits. At least when you are physically dead you don't feel the pain anymore."
The son said he tried to kill himself as the case progressed through the courts.
Outside court police said the man's offending made up one of the worst and most complex cases of Operation Hope, an operation set up to sort through more than 100 open cases of child abuse due to police understaffing and systemic failures.
"I want today's sentencing to send a clear message to all communities across New Zealand that adult victims of historic sexual offending can come forward and can make a complaint to the New Zealand police and know that it will be fully investigated," said Detective Senior Sergeant Tusha Penny, head of the Wellington District Child Protection Team.
The team will move into a building in Petone that will also house staff from Child Youth and Family and Hutt Valley District Health Board and a joint partnership with such agencies was the best way to deal with child abuse investigations, police believed.
Ms Penny said the Manawatu man's case was one of the more complex and demanding in Operation Hope. The only comparison was with the Blenheim man, Stewart Murray Wilson, who was convicted in 1996 for sex offending over a 23-year-period, including charges of bestiality and rape, she told the Manawatu Standard.
But making this case that much harder was the lack of remorse shown by the Dutch-born man, whose offending was predatorial and depraved, she said.
