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Sunday Star
Times
March 24, 2002
Sex case ends in payout bid
by Donna Chisholm
A farm worker jailed for nine months for sexually abusing
his stepdaughter is seeking a government payout after the girl admitted she
made up the story to get her mother's attention.
The man's conviction was quashed last year but his
lawyer Rob Harrison says the man's family has been split and he has had to
move from place to place because his life became "unbearable" when
word of the conviction spread.
"It's been pretty shattering," the man,
whose name is suppressed, told the Sunday Star-Times.
He never imagined he would be jailed and when he
was sentenced, his main memory was of "going downstairs into the
cage".
Family members disowned him and people in his
community threatened him. However, his wife, the girl's mother, stuck by him.
"She had a gut feeling that it might not have
happened."
Under new government guidelines, the man could
receive around $100,000. He served about five months of the sentence in 1993
after pleading guilty to sexually violating the girl. She was nine at the
time and claimed he molested her when she and his one-year-old child were
sharing his bed while their mother was in hospital having the couple's second
child.
The man said he had to rely on what the girl said
because he was drunk and had no memory of any incident - he had been drinking
heavily after a close friend died.
Harrison said it was an exacerbating feature that the girl retracted
the allegation to foster parents before the man appeared in court - but
although the couple passed on that information to the Children and Young
Persons' Service (CYPS), the defence was never told.
CYPS also knew that in subsequent years, the girl made
and withdrew allegations about four other men.
In 1998, she made two more claims about her
stepfather and he was again charged with sexually abusing her in 1998. He and
his wife were both charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice
in telling the complainant to change her story. The couple then hired a
private investigator whose report prompted police to review the case. The
girl admitted she made up the story because her mother did not have time for
her any more.
The report concluded the complainant was not a
credible witness and the police withdrew the charges. The case was referred
to the youth aid section with a view to prosecuting the girl for the
allegations she made in 1993. She was not charged.
His stepdaughter does not live with the family and
he said he would probably never be able to trust her again. "I think
he'll be able to forgive but not forget," his wife said.
Harrison acted for an Auckland man who became the first since
Arthur Allan Thomas to be compensated for wrongful imprisonment when he was
awarded nearly $600,000 nearly two years ago after spending 14 months in jail
for sexually abusing his son. The son later admitted he made up the story.
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