An Auckland man who raped and blackmailed several young women after taking advantage of their strict South Asian upbringing will spend at least 10 years in jail.
Name suppression was today lifted on Junior Ranga Sami Pillai as he was sentenced to 19-1/2 years in jail, with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years, at the High Court in Auckland today on 48 charges.
They included 13 charges of rape, 11 charges of unlawful sexual connection, one charge of attempted sexual violation, one charge of sexual connection with a young person, three charges of unlawful detention with the intention of sexual connection, 13 charges of blackmail and six of obtaining by deception.
All bar one victim was between the age of 15 and 22. The other was a 12-year-old. All were of South Asian ethnic origin, mostly Indian from strict Hindu families.
Pillai, 25, of Fijian Indian descent, was found guilty of 22 charges following a trial in the middle of last year. He admitted five other charges at the beginning of that trial.
Two other trials were pending but they were subsequently called off after he admitted 21 other charges.
Pillai contacted many of his victims via the internet and from there manipulated them into having sex with him while threatening to tell their parents.
Justice John Priestley said most of the offences were committed when Pillai was either on bail or under sentence for a charge of obtaining a benefit by deception.
Justice Priestley said Pillai was right on the cusp of a preventive detention sentence, under which he would have been imprisoned indefinitely.
But he said he decided to hand him a finite term of imprisonment instead following Pillai's guilty plea on 21 charges, the fact he was a first offender on the sex charges and the beginnings of him showing some insight into his offending since his guilty pleas.
NZPA
source: newshub archive
