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REVEALED: Peter Stewart was found guilty of one charge of sodomy, one of
rape, three of indecent assault and two of inducing an indecent act.
A prominent Canterbury businessman
convicted of rape can now be named as Peter Maxwell Stewart, 62, of Hororata. Name supression was lifted this
morning. Earlier this month a jury in
the High Court at Christchurch found Stewart guilty of one charge of
sodomy, one of rape, three of indecent assault and two of inducing an
indecent act. The charges arose from sexual
abuse said to have occurred between 30 and 40 years ago. Stewart was to be sentenced today
but that has been delayed to February 12, mainly because a pre-sentence
report has not yet been completed, Justice Graham Panckhurst was set
to consider a bid for continued name suppression when Stewart's counsel,
Jonathan Eaton, said it seemed Stewart's name as the "prominent
Canterbury businessman'' was so widely known in Christchurch that suppression
was no longer sought. Reasons advanced earlier that
lifting suppression would affect the business interests of other family
members had been addressed in recent days. "I have clear instructions
not to seek a final order for suppression of name and invite Your Honour to
lift the order,'' he said. Stewart is a member of a
well-known Canterbury family with business interests as a farmer, company
director, and charter boat operator. During the trial the jury heard
that Stewart manipulated the complainant to masturbate him and perform other
indecencies on him in the late 1960s when she was under 12. The Crown said the complainant had
been in love with the dashing young man who drove fast cars and who was kind
to her, and he had exploited that to turn her into the "perfect
victim". The jury found Stewart sodomised
the complainant behind Christchurch International Airport when she was aged
between 10 and 13 and raped her in 1974 on his marital bed, where she lay
with an inflatable splint after breaking her ankle in a skiing mishap. Stewart admitted one act of sexual
intercourse with the complainant that he said occurred on his boat when she
was 17. Wearing a white bikini, she had come on to him and "it just
happened", he said. The defence argued the complainant
had always been envious of the accused's wife and had repackaged her
childhood sexual fantasies into sexual attacks to pressure the accused to
bail her out of financial trouble. That had backfired when
negotiations ended and she was locked into the fabrications. Stewart's care and kindness had
been repaid with allegations "fuelled by envy and motivated by
money", the defence said. |
