An Auckland man who raped and assaulted six girls when they were all teenagers – and then went on to offend against a 13-year old while he still had name suppression – can finally be identified.<\/p>\n
In a written decision released today, the Supreme Court has rejected a further bid by Luca Fairgray, 22, to continue his name suppression pending an appeal on his most recent convictions.<\/p>\n
“In our view the possibility of a retrial and associated unfairness from publication do not outweigh the principles of open justice where that prospect is<\/p>\n
speculative and other safeguards are available. Further, there is considerable public interest in knowing about the appellant’s previous history,” the judges wrote.<\/p>\n
Luca Fairgray offended against his first victim in 2017, when both were 14. He was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention in 2022, after pleading guilty to a total of 10 charges including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault, and sexual conduct with a person under 16.<\/p>\n
While some of Fairgray’s charges were filed in the youth court, where automatic name suppression applies, the case was transferred to the District Court because of his age at the time of the later offences, and because of their serious nature.<\/p>\n
He asked for permanent name suppression on the basis that publishing his name would be likely to cause extreme hardship and endanger his safety.<\/p>\n
His application was declined, as was a later appeal to the High Court. The Court of Appeal then declined him leave to appeal a second time.<\/p>\n
He took it to the Supreme Court, but that court ruled public interest outweighed Fairgray’s right to privacy.<\/p>\n
However, before he could be named, the court was told Fairgray was facing new charges against a 13-year-old girl and extended name suppression to protect his right to a fair trial.<\/p>\n
He was found guilty in February this year of three charges of sexual conduct with a young person and is due to be sentenced later this month.<\/p>\n
In a written judgement released today, the Supreme Court has declined Fairgray’s further application for ongoing name suppression.<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Auckland man who raped and assaulted six girls when they were all teenagers – and then went on to offend against a 13-year old while he still had name suppression – can finally be identified. In a written decision released today, the Supreme Court has rejected a further bid by Luca Fairgray, 22, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12924,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12922\/revisions\/12924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}