Charles Afeaki’s sentence lengthened for historical child abuse in Auckland, Invercargill schools

It marked Afeaki’s fourth sentencing over the past 30 years and his eighth confirmed victim. But it might not be his last.

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

That case was initially filed out of Manukau District Court just weeks after Afeaki pleaded guilty to the charge for which he was sentenced this week.

And the Herald understands a 10th accuser has recently spoken with police after media coverage of Afeaki’s offending.

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

‘Wretched hypocrite’

Afeaki, then known as Brother Charles, taught at the now defunct Marist Brothers Primary School in Invercargill from 1973 to 1977, before moving to Auckland to teach at St Paul’s College in Ponsonby.

He served as a school master responsible for overseeing boarding school pupils on campus, at school camps and other outings.

But it was under the guise of discipline, often for alleged minor infractions, that he would inflict sadistic sexual abuse on children.

Police launched an investigation in early 1993 after the first outcry and interviewed Afeaki, who by that time was no longer a Marist Brother.

He was later found guilty at trial of 15 sexual abuse charges for incidents between August 1976 and December 1980. One complainant had attended school in Invercargill; three others in Auckland.

Afeaki suggested while in the witness box that the complainants were seeking revenge for him having been a harsh schoolmaster. His lawyer at the time also argued they might have been motivated to lie by an ACC or civil suit payout.

In a terse judgment months after the trial concluded, the Court of Appeal would later label the defence a “conspiracy theory” seeming to “totally lack any foundation”. The sentiment echoed that of Justice Ted Thomas, who oversaw the trial.

“Mr Afeaki, to put it bluntly, is a wretched and self-dedicated hypocrite, who not only committed the offences for which he has been convicted, but also then maintained his innocence and lied on oath,” Justice Thomas said.

The justice system took a softer approach nine years later when Afeaki returned to the High Court for sentencing a second time. He had been paroled in 1998 and when a new accusation surfaced involving a different victim from two decades earlier, he accepted responsibility for nine charges and apologised to the victim’s family.

That time, Justice Hugh Williams allowed a sentence of home detention, describing it as significant that Afeaki finally seemed to understand the damage he had done.

A third tranche of historic charges was filed in 2021. Afeaki spent the next two years disputing them, but changed tack on the third day of the December 2023 trial after the first victim had already been cross-examined and the second was at court waiting to be called.

He changed his pleas to guilty for all 15 charges, leading to his sentencing last August.

Another comes forward

The case for which he was sentenced this week was similar in many ways to his previous offending.

“During a lunchtime school break on a Friday between September 5, 1975, and September 26, 1975, the victim was involved in a playground altercation where he physically assaulted another pupil,” court documents state. “The defendant intervened and sent the victim to wait outside his classroom. The victim knew he was in trouble.

“When the defendant arrived, he dragged the victim into the classroom and shut the door behind him.”

Afeaki then yelled at the student before double-checking that the door was locked and circling behind him. He grabbed the victim by the throat as he abused him.

“As the victim cried uncontrollably, the defendant cautioned him to be quiet,” documents state. “When he finished, he told the victim to pull his shorts up and get back outside.”

Later in the day, the teacher approached the student in art class and pinched him “hard like a wasp sting” while quietly warning him not to tell anyone. Afeaki declined to speak to police about the latest allegation but he accepted the summary of facts was true.

In an interview before this week’s hearing, Afeaki said he didn’t remember the incident. But he agreed that it must have occurred based on the similarities with other cases.

‘Losing faith’

The latest confirmed victim watched the hearing via an audio-video feed from his home.

“I don’t wish to speak to that person,” he said when the judge asked him if he wished to address Afeaki directly.

He instead relied on 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.

He 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, describing the time he was reduced to a fit of tears for something as routine as a prostate exam.

The judge recognised the man’s “significant courage” dialling into the hearing, agreeing with Crown prosecutor Ryan Benic that the victim impact statement was a clear example of how far-reaching the effects of child abuse can extend.

Deteriorated condition

Afeaki technically faced up to 10 years’ imprisonment for the single charge of indecency between a man and a boy. But as judges have repeatedly noted as he stood before them, a lengthy sentence was not possible given the fact all of his charges over the past 30 years have related to the same historic period.

Instead of approaching the case afresh, Lummis said she had to add an incremental amount reflective of what she reckoned her predecessors would have doled out had all the victims been known during the previous sentencings.

At his August sentencing, she had rejected his request for home detention based in part on his ongoing health issues. She told him in a sentence indication hearing earlier this year that, if he was to plead guilty, she was likely to take the same approach.

“There does need to be some additional penalty to recognise the harm to the victim,” she said this week.

Afeaki, who has been housed at South Auckland Corrections Facility, grasped a cane as security officers put him in the courtroom dock. The judge allowed him to sit in a wheelchair outside the glass-enclosed area, directly in front of her bench, after inquiring about Afeaki’s hearing and learning he had lost one of his hearing aids.

“You’re looking better than when I saw you last,” she said.

But if he’s made any health gains, it would be only marginally so, defence lawyer Roger Eagles told the court.

“His condition has deteriorated, almost as expected,” he said, pointing out that he had hernia surgery in December and continues to have trouble with mobility.

Eagles submitted a letter from a prison GP stating that Afeaki’s health has continued to deteriorate since the surgery.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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