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‘I was terrified all the time’: Catholic Brother, schoolteacher faces trial for historical sex offences
“From that day on, I was terrified,” an alleged victim of sexual abuse by Marist Brother and schoolteacher Charles Afeaki told an interviewing police detective.
“I stopped learning at that class, I stopped learning at that school. I stopped learning forever.”
Three hours of police video interviews with the complainant were shown to the court on the opening day of the trial of 81-year-old former Marist Brother and teacher, who faces 14 charges related to alleged historic sexual offending in the 1970s.
Afeaki denies all the offending and is facing a judge-alone trial in front of Judge Kirsten Lummis at the Auckland District Court.
On Tuesday, prosecutor Daniel Becker detailed how 12 charges related to alleged offending by Afeaki against an 11-year-old pupil of his at Marist Brothers primary school in Invercargill in 1975, including sexual assaults in a classroom, behind a scout den, and on a school trip.
The others relate to a boy who was aged 12 when taught by Afeaki at St Paul’s College in central Auckland in 1979.
Afeaki’s lawyer Roger Eagles said his client denied the offending, and could not remember either of the complainants.
“The defendant says there are numerous aspects of the evidence of the complainants that are wrong, and unbelievable.”
Afeaki has been imprisoned on two previous occasions for sexual offending. In 1994, he was labelled a hypocrite by the judge who sentenced him to eight years’ jail for offending against four boys in the late 1970s. In 2003, he was sentenced to two years in prison for offences against a fifth boy, but the court heard then that he had turned his life around.
