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Offender Databases Charles Hati

Charles Waldo Hati

Alias

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Offences

Eleven charges of rape and indecent assault inflicted on two girls aged 5-6 in 1976 and when one of the girls was aged 12-13

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

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Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1962

Current Location

Prison

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to just six years in July 2010

Background
From the Whakatane Beacon 8th September 2010
AN Eastern Bay man is finally being held to account for his prolonged sexual abuse of two young girls that started 34 years ago. Charles Waldo Hati, 48, originally from Raukokore, was sentenced to six years’ prison in the Tauranga District Court last month, after being found guilty of 11 historical charges of rape and indecent assault at a defended hearing. Hati was only 14 years old when the offending began – the twin girls, who were members of his extended family, were only five or six.

The girls had been sent to the East Cape area to bolster the numbers of a local school. At Hati’s sentencing on July 22, Judge Peter Rollo said that “most regrettably, that experience turned into a significant trauma for these two young girls because of the actions that you visited upon them for your own sexual pleasures”. Judge Rollo described to the court in explicit detail the abuse that the young girls sustained at the hands of Hati. He said Hati had used physical violence to gain control over them, before sexually attacking them – forcing them to engage in sexual behaviour and often making the other sister watch.

He forced them to perform oral sex on him, masturbate him and eventually tried to rape them. Judge Rollo said Hati would ensure compliance by grabbing hold of them and punching them in the head with a closed fist. "They were very afraid of you because if they did not instantly comply with what you required you would hit them or threaten to strike them, sometimes with a stick or tree branch," the judge said. Hati threatened to beat the girls if they told anyone. The attacks happened wherever Hati could get the girls alone, from bedrooms, to under a water tank stand and a meeting house at a local marae and went on for several years.

"For your own gross purposes you abused them constantly, at least two to three times a week, their evidence was, during the times they were living in the same area as you, to fulfil your base desires," Judge Rollo said. "Nothing can justify your actions against these innocent young girls, who you preyed upon in a premeditated way. "You were premeditated in the way in which you organised to be alone with these girls, to take advantage of their going to the toilet, or going to school or being alone in the house." There was a further incident of indecent assault against one of the girls when she was 12 or 13 and he was about 20, when she had come to visit family.

The judge said Hati’s actions had caused the girls’ lifelong emotional harm. In their victim impact statements they disclosed that nearly every day they were reminded of these incidents. One of the girls attended the sentencing to personally read her statement and face her tormentor in court and the judge commended her courage. On calculating an appropriate sentence for Hati, Judge Rollo took into account the multiplicity of offending, the accompanying violence, the degrading nature of his actions and his callousness in ignoring their pain. Another aggravating factor was the significant and long-lasting effect the offending had on the girls. The judge gave him a three-year discount from a starting point of nine years’ prison, for his age.

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Corrections and Additional Information
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