BOX WORKER’S OFFENCES

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18796, 18 November 1932, Page 6

BOX WORKER’S OFFENCES

LONG TERM INFLIOTED. Three years’ Imprisonment with hard labour, was the sentence imposed on William Ashton, aged 62 years, by Mr Justice Herdman, in the Supreme Court at Hamilton to-day. Ashton, who worked in a box factory at Kakahi, near Taumarunul, was found guilty this week on two oharges of indecent assault bn females. lie pleaded guilty to a similar indictment at Auckland. In pleading for the prisoner, Mr W. Noble remarked that the oase was most distressing. “Ashton is a widower with a family of one son and three daughters,” he said. He was chairman of the Kakahi School Committee and a member of the Patriotic Society and a highly respected citizen. After an Illness he found that he was unable to drink without severe complications, and abstained from liquor for 15 years. His head gave him trouble again last Christmas, and he took to drink again. All the offences have taken place since then.” His Honour, in imposing sentence, remarked that there might be some excuse for a younger man but for a man of prisoner’s age there was no excuse. In such cases he sometimes ordered a flogging. While he did not propose that action, he intended to impose such punishment as would act as a warning to men of accused’s type.