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Offender Databases Peter Stewart

Peter Maxwell Stewart

Alias

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Offences

Rape, sodomy and indecent assault (x5) of a Christchurch girl over ten years from when she was aged eight in 1967

Victims

.

Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none

Age

Born 1945

Current Location

At large

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 3 years 6 months in February 2008
Paroled May 2009

Background
NZ Herald story here and here
Parole Board decision detailed here
The Press Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Millionaire convicted rapist Peter Stewart has had his appeal against conviction turned down.Stewart was jailed this year for three-and-a-half years on five charges of indecency with a girl under 12, one count of sodomy and one of rape. His trial was held in December last year.

Stewart's lawyer, Paul Davison, QC, told the Appeal Court in Wellington in July that trial judge Justice Graham Panckhurst had wrongly directed the jury and made errors in his summing up. The Court of Appeal ruled that such errors as had been shown were not material and had not caused a miscarriage of justice. Stewart, 62, the son of electrical goods tycoon Sir Robertson Stewart, was sentenced earlier this year. The offences took place between 1967 and 1978 and started when his victim was aged eight and Stewart was 22.

The judge also raised the question of whether a reparation report would be appropriate. Mr Shamy said he would check with the victim about that before it was prepared. The report would clear the way for a payment for emotional harm from Stewart to the victim.

Such a payment was discussed between lawyers as a civil claim in 2004 and 2005 before she made her formal complaint to the police. The woman told the court she dropped the claim when she heard allegations that she was only doing it because she wanted a house and money. That was unfair, she told the court. She only wanted the truth.

The Press, Christchurch, 19th December 2007
A prominent Canterbury businessman convicted of rape can now be named as Peter Maxwell Stewart, 62, of Hororata. Name supression was lifted this morning. Earlier this month a jury in the High Court at Christchurch found Stewart guilty of one charge of sodomy, one of rape, three of indecent assault and two of inducing an indecent act. The charges arose from sexual abuse said to have occurred between 30 and 40 years ago.

Stewart was to be sentenced today but that has been delayed to February 12, mainly because a pre-sentence report has not yet been completed,

Justice Graham Panckhurst was set to consider a bid for continued name suppression when Stewart's counsel, Jonathan Eaton, said it seemed Stewart's name as the "prominent Canterbury businessman'' was so widely known in Christchurch that suppression was no longer sought.

Reasons advanced earlier that lifting suppression would affect the business interests of other family members had been addressed in recent days. "I have clear instructions not to seek a final order for suppression of name and invite Your Honour to lift the order,'' he said. Stewart is a member of a well-known Canterbury family with business interests as a farmer, company director, and charter boat operator.

During the trial the jury heard that Stewart manipulated the complainant to masturbate him and perform other indecencies on him in the late 1960s when she was under 12. The Crown said the complainant had been in love with the dashing young man who drove fast cars and who was kind to her, and he had exploited that to turn her into the "perfect victim". The jury found Stewart sodomised the complainant behind Christchurch International Airport when she was aged between 10 and 13 and raped her in 1974 on his marital bed, where she lay with an inflatable splint after breaking her ankle in a skiing mishap.

Stewart admitted one act of sexual intercourse with the complainant that he said occurred on his boat when she was 17. Wearing a white bikini, she had come on to him and "it just happened", he said. The defence argued the complainant had always been envious of the accused's wife and had repackaged her childhood sexual fantasies into sexual attacks to pressure the accused to bail her out of financial trouble. That had backfired when negotiations ended and she was locked into the fabrications. Stewart's care and kindness had been repaid with allegations "fuelled by envy and motivated by money", the defence said.

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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

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