The rape of a 13-year-old female student by a cook in a boarding school was a gross breach of trust, a judge said yesterday.

Justice Paul Madigan said it was abominable.

He made the remarks when he sentenced a man, 66, to 14 years imprisonment with a minimum parole period of 11 years for rape and two counts of indecent assault.

He said: “The rape of this young girl is aggravated by the fact that apart from being of a vulnerable age she was away from her family and in the care of her teachers and staff of the boarding school.

“Any child and her parents should be secure in their perception that a boarding school would be a safe environment.”

He said the accused went to great lengths in his defence to tell the court that he was regarded as a father figure to the students and would care for them and hug them whenever they met.

“This may well be a culturally acceptable way of life in Fiji but only if it were to stop there,” Justice Madigan said.

“To extend that affection to sexual abuse is abominable.”

The man was also convicted for indecent assault involving two other female students, 13 and 11. They were all studying at a district school in Bua. The man and his wife were the cooks at the school.

On three separate occasions, each of the girls told of circumstances in which they were alone in the company of the man and how he sexually abused them.

The first girl went to the man’s quarters where he lived with his wife and daughter to see the daughter who was her friend. Her friend was not there, but the man pulled her into the room, undressed her and himself and pinning her hands with his hands, forced her on to a bed and then raped her.

A second girl visited the kitchen in order to get food. She had asked the man when he was attending to maintenance work in the girls’ dormitory.

He told her he had buns and to come to the kitchen alone.

When she got to the kitchen, he pulled inside his room, kissed and fondled her breasts while she resisted.

The third girl is the niece of the man. She had been helping a senior teacher clean his house when he asked her to go to the man and ask for a pair of pliers. She went and the man and his wife were in the room. The man told his wife to go out and serve lunch to the students. He then pushed the young girl on to a bed and kissed her, then fondled her breasts.

Since the incidents, the man had left the school to be a farmer and a fisherman, supporting his wife and daughter who is a solo mother with a six months child.

Edited by Maraia Vula

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