Former Marist brother receives 40th child sex abuse conviction

Auckland District Court Judge Kirsten Lummis added two months to an existing 25-month sentence for Charles Robert Afeaki on June 4. It was Afeaki’s fourth sentencing during the past 30 years and his eighth victim. Afeaki had pleaded guilty to a charge of indecency between a man and a boy.

The latest victim, now aged 61, was 12 and attending Invercargill’s Marist Brothers Primary School when the offending happened in 1975.

“You were his teacher – someone he was meant to look up to and take orders from,” Judge Lummis told Afeaki at the sentencing for the eighth confirmed victim. “For you, this victim was one of many.”

The latest confirmed victim gave a written victim impact statement referred to repeatedly by the judge, but not read aloud in full.

“He speaks of losing faith in the Catholic Church because of your abuse,” Judge Lummis said.

The victim described spiralling into alcoholism and PTSD after learning about Afeaki’s first trial in the 1990s, having previously assumed the defendant was dead. He now considers himself a recovering alcoholic, but the effects of his abuse remain in place, he said.

“I haven’t been able to work for 17 years; I’ve been deemed unfit,” he said.

The judge said that the victim impact statement was a clear example of how far-reaching the effects of child abuse can extend.

Afeaki, 82, has been in and out of prison since the mid-1990s. He returned to prison last August, having been ordered to serve a 25-month term after admitting to the abuse of two boys at schools in Auckland and Invercargill.

Afeaki is also awaiting a judge-alone trial in the Whanganui District Court on charges filed in March about allegations he repeatedly abused an 11-year-old boy in 1977.

He was no longer a Marist brother by the early 1990s.

Anyone who has a concern or complaint about abuse in a Catholic setting is encouraged to contact the Police or the Church’s National Office for Professional Standards on 0800 114 622.

FULL STORY

Charles Afeaki’s sentence lengthened for historical child abuse in Auckland, Invercargill schools (By Craig Kapitan/New Zealand Herald)