Sick, Sick, Sick.
I know I've blogged a bit on Graham Capill a bit recently but hopefully this will be the last post bar one on his deeds.
The 46 year old former leader of the Christian Heritage Party appeared in the Christchurch District Court today to answer multiple charges of historic child sex abuse. For the record the amended charges, involving two female complainants are as follows:
Three counts of indecent assault.
One count of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.
One count of rape.
(all of these are representative charges meaning the offences occurred on more than one occasion)
These are additional to the charge of indecent assault he pleaded guilty to in April. That involved an 8 year old girl with the offence happening between 2000 and 2002.
According to the summary of facts the offending against these two girls took place over a decade between 1990 and 1999. This was a time when Capill was the leader of the Christian Heritage Party, a moral conservative who made speeches full of fire and brimstone about the perfidies of child abusers. All the while he was committing the very sins he was railing against. It is a disturbing dichotomy, but apparently not an unusual one as far as child sex abusers are concerned. His activities took place over a period of years. In the case of one of the girls he began abusing her when she was just five years old and this continued until she was about 12. I won't go into too many details as they're just frankly repulsive. With the second girl, Capill began forcing his attentions on her when she was 8. Between the ages of 10 and 12 he raped her on at least two occasions.
It seems when they were older (ie about 11 or 12) they were able to escape some of his attentions. One even went so far to say to him "you've got a wife, Why aren't you going to her?" The summary of facts states Capill apologised to his victims after his actions but it obviously never stopped him from continuing. During a wedding where one of the girls was to be a bridesmaid, she was in a room changing into a dress when Capill entered and indecently assaulted her. As I said earlier this is disturbing stuff but what I'm writing here barely scratches the surface.
Today Capill was remanded in custody ahead of being sentenced next month. It's impossible to say what jail term he'll get as his public profile potentially causes all sorts of issues. As an example, will the Judge see his public stance against abuse as an aggravating factor given that at the time he was making his moral crusade he was destroying the lives of innocent girls? Will this be offset by his previously clean record and history of public service? Either way the gravity of his offending can only be regarded as extremely serious and his abuse of trust of the worst possible kind. Graham Capill is going to jail and it's likely he'll be there for some time.
Jail's also going to be a very unpleasant place for him too. Capill has three qualities which ordinary decent criminals despise. Firstly he's a child abuser, that puts him right at the bottom of the criminal pecking order and a natural target. Secondly he's a former politician and a Christian one at that. Again not careers that are held in high regard by most prisoners. Finally he used to be a police prosecutor. I can imagine the gang members inside will just love that! Odds are that Capill will be separated off from the general population and will end up at the sex offenders unit at Rolleston Prison. Quite frankly his life expectancy if he was put in the general prison population would be drastically shortened.
