A 45-year-old father of five, Sunia Mailau, was convicted of committing incest, rape, assault and indecent acts against his teenage daughter. He was sentenced following trial, to over nine years’ imprisonment by Justice C.B. Cato of the Tonga Supreme Court on 17 December.

According to Mr Justice Cato's ruling, the accused Mailau committed the offences between December 2016 and January 2017 when the victim stayed with him and his wife (the victim’s step-mother). The victim was 17-years-old at the time.

“From the outset of offending, she had been threatened by her father and had been the victim of a serious assault, which he admitted. She was the victim of very serious sexual abuse.”

“The impression I got at trial was that he was an authoritarian, dominating personality, not without cunning and able to present a more affable personality when required", Mr Justice Cato added.

Mailau pleaded innocent to all charges except the charge of assault, claiming that he was only attempting discipline his daughter. He claimed that his daughter had manufactured the charges.

Justice Cato stated “The prisoner was unrepresented but in my view defended himself competently, his defence being that the allegations had been manufactured it seemed because his daughter had wanted to get away from him, because she feared he would beat her for not attending an examination. In fact, she had attended and had passed the examination.”

 “He continued to deny the offending apart from the assault to which he had pleaded guilty. He said that the reason for the assault in the probation report was that it was right that he assaulted the accused for disobeying him, to maintain her obedience and discipline. I did not accept the rather sanitised view of the offending, which he and his wife presented at the trial.

Mailau is from Afā.