Actor Rene Naufahu Gets a Year’s Home Detention for Indecent Assaults

Former Shortland Street star Rene Naufahu has been sentenced to a year’s home detention for indecently assaulting six students at his acting classes.

Initially Naufahu denied the allegations, describing them in a sit-down cafe interview as “ridiculous” and “ludicrous”. Eventually he pleaded guilty to six charges of offending occurring between 2011 and 2013.

Naufahu would select women for one-on-one classes, then conducted his offending under the guise of improving their acting.

While Naufahu had pleaded guilty, Judge Ronayne said at his sentencing that he was still trying to “shift” some of the blame onto his victims.

“You are the the guilty one, not them. It was you who breached their trust.

“….You publicly shamed the victims by denying the offending.”

In a statement yesterday, Naufahu called the case a “brutal learning curve”. He attributed his behaviour to his passion for the craft: “I let my professional passion for the art of acting became personal and the lines between the two became blurred,” the statement reads.

He also notes that his “passion for acting,” while diminished by the case, has now returned.

“For a long while after I was charged and had to confront my behaviour, my passion for acting disappeared. However, I have worked through this and I am pleased that it has returned. However, the lessons learnt through this phase of my life will not be forgotten and I will ensure that everyone that I work with are at all times safe and feel safe.”

One of Naufahu’s victims, Rose, spoke to VICE last year about his impact on her and watching his attempts to resuscitate his public image.

“Hopefully [people] can sit privately at home, and see through that man’s bullshit. But if no-one really talks about it, it can be swept under the rug, he can continue to get away with things,” she says.

“If society rallies around this, it does make a difference. I’m sitting here like, come on people! Be pissed off about this! And maybe we’re a small country and he’s not a Harvey Weinstein but really, what he did is the exact same thing. And how we deal with this does show how we feel about this—how we regard that behaviour in general,”

Read the full story of Rose here.

Follow Tess on Twitter: @tessairini