A Tongan man who was jailed for raping two children spanning a five-year period in New Zealand will be deported to the kingdom as soon as he leaves prison.
Vailea Pola was sentenced in the Manukau District Court on May 10 after earlier being convicted on 15 charges relating to the sexual abuse, NZ Herald reported.
Pola must serve at least half of his sentence before he can apply for parole.
He denied all of the offending – but a jury found him guilty of raping and sexually violating a girl and sexually violating and indecently assaulting a boy.
The court heard that the abuse started soon after Pola moved to South Auckland from Tonga.
He would go into the bedrooms of the children and rape, violate or assault them – or seek them out when they were away from other people, including in the bathroom.
When he raped the girl he covered her mouth with his hand to stop her from screaming out, and told her that she would “never see her parents again” if she told anyone what had happened.
He told the boy he would “smash him” if he disclosed the abuse.
Judge McGuire said a pre-sentence report prepared by Probation Services showed the true extent of Pola’s dark side.
“Your response was the victims’ had lied and you called them troublemakers – you show no remorse,” he said.
During the interview for the report, Pola was “relaxed, casual and even laughed at times” when questioned about his sex crimes.
Judge McGuire said those crimes were “abhorrent”.
The report also identified Pola as a sexual deviant with a propensity for violence, intimidation and exploitation of others.
Crown prosecutor Ben Smith sought a sentence of 16 years in prison with no discount for Pola’s otherwise clean record.
He said while in some cases a discount for a lack of previous offending was appropriate – it was not for Pola.
“The defendant shows no remorse … he continues to deny the offending,” Smith told the court.
He also asked Judge McGuire to impose a minimum term of imprisonment.
Defence lawyer Nalesoni Tupou said there was no need for an MPI (minimum term of imprisonment) as Pola would be deported “as soon as the sun sets on his term of imprisonment”.
He said the rapist had no criminal record in Tonga.