escalating violence in our community Become a member of the Sensible Sentencing Trust

Mouseover links for full page descriptions

Offender Databases Pusa Finau

Pusa Finau

Alias

Matua Finau

Offences

Sexual violation (x2) and indecent assault (x4) of an 11 year old Porirua girl in 2000
Prior convictions for sexual assault (x2) in Christchurch in 1975
A manslaughter conviction in 1982
Convictions for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, assaulting a female, wilful damage and attempted arson in December 1990 and February 1991
Also has other convictions for assault, wilful damage, resisting police, using obscene language and fighting in a public place.

Victims

.

Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1949

Current Location

Unknown

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 5 years 9 months (GBH, assaulting a female, wilful damage and attempted arson charges) in 1991
Sentenced to 4 years 6 months in January 2001

Background
From a Dominion article 20/01/2001
A PORIRUA man who resigned this month from his position as a caregiver at a mental health care home was sentenced in Wellington District Court yesterday to four and-a-half years jail for sexually violating an 11-year-old girl.

Pusa Finau, 52, also known as Matua Finau, resigned as caregiver and board member of the Porirua-based Fagai Care after The Dominion revealed he had been convicted of serious criminal offences, including manslaughter and sexual assault. Though Finau was convicted of sexual violation and indecent assault in December, details could not be published at the time because of a name supression order, which has now been lifted.

Mana Tagata Pasifika president Litea Ah Hoi said members of the Porirua community had contacted her about Finau's convictions in December and his association with "vulnerable people". Family members sobbed yesterday as Finau was sentenced to four and-a-half years in jail for two counts of sexual violation, and two years for four counts of indecent assault, to be served concurrently. The victim's name and relationship to Finau were suppressed.

Judge Anne Gaskill said the victim, aged 11 and 12 at the time of the offending, was made to feel powerless by Finau: "When she threatened to disclose the offending, your response was to laugh at her. This was persistent offending which occurred over a maximum period of two years. "Children are entitled to be protected from conduct of this kind. Therefore, it is necessary to impose a deterrent sentence to show this is not acceptable."

Finau was one of five board members of Fagai Care, which opened the week before Christmas. The government-funded organisation has four residential care houses, three in Waitangirua and one in Cannons Creek, housing 16 former psychiatric patients, aged between 20 and 60 years. Finau's history of criminal convictions dates back 25 years.

He has two convictions for sexual assault in Christchurch in 1975. In 1982 he was one of 13 men convicted for the manslaughter of Mongrel Mob leader Lester Epps during a brawl between rival gangs in Newtown . In 1991, Finau was jailed for five years and nine months for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, assaulting a female, wilful damage and attempted arson.

The charges arose from two incidents. In February 1991 Finau attacked his former wife's new partner in the face with a claw hammer, permanently damaging one of the man's eyes and knocking out 12 of his teeth.

Two months earlier he had poured petrol over his former wife, and inside her house, then set newspaper alight, threatening to torch her, before she managed to extinguish the burning paper. Finau also has convictions for assault, wilful damage, resisting police, using obscene language and fighting in a public place.

---

Corrections and Additional Information
We endeavour to make this database as accurate as possible, but we are at the mercy of whatever information we can find in various online and offline archives. We rely on the public - that is, people like you - to fill in the gaps that we cannot. If you wish to submit additional information or a correction to this file CLICK HERE . Privacy: Trust policy is that all sources are treated as strictly confidential unless we are explicitly told otherwise. If you wish to see a file removed from this database certain conditions must be met by the offender set out HERE Note that this does NOT apply for those that are the primary offender in a murder, rape, or any sexual offending involving minors. We do not enter into correspondence regarding the guilt/innocence of offenders. Such correspondence is not responded to, especially if the offender concerned has a number of prior convictions

Back to Top