Ex-Otago Boys High School maths teacher David Bond, 73, was this morning found guilty of indecent assault following a day-long judge-alone trial before the Dunedin District Court this week.
Judge David Robinson said Bond’s claims of innocence were “entirely unconvincing” while the victim of the molestation appeared “sincere and honest”.
The pair were part of a group who travelled to Mt Aspiring on a camp in 2008, the court heard.
The victim said he was asleep in a bunk room when he heard Bond enter in the middle of the night and remove another pupil who had been sleeping on the floor.
About an hour later, he awoke to the teacher placing a hand on his buttocks and the other down the front of his pyjamas.
“I was just checking on you, making sure you were ok,” he recalled Bond saying.
The man said he was frozen at the time.
“I was so uncomfortable, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to react, so I did nothing,” he said.
The judge said the victim’s description of events appeared genuine.
“I was struck by aspects of the [police] video interview where he detailed emotions and reactions to the incident,” he said.
Bond, who opted to give evidence at trial, said he had been on 38 camps and had never been in the dorms after lights-out.
“If someone was in the bunk room, standing over you, it would be a very creepy thing to happen and I would never have contemplated doing something like that,” he said.
But the slew of propensity evidence of his previous crimes weighed heavily against him.
The court heard of four incidents between 1975 and 2011 when Bond had committed indecent assaults on pupils, some of which Judge Robinson said were “strikingly similar”.
They included several episodes during which the ex-teacher had molested children in their bunks.
Bond attempted to expose the differences between those sex attacks and the newest allegation but the judge highlighted the “substantial departure” from the facts to which the defendant had previously pleaded guilty.
The claims were "self-serving", he ruled.
While the victim in the current case accepted he had made errors in some of his evidence, Judge Robinson said the appropriate concessions bolstered his credibility.
“[He was] unshaken in his core allegation,” the judge said.
Bond, on the other hand, had a “surprisingly clear recollection of the activities” of 17 years ago.
Allegations the teacher had indecently touched students during rock-climbing, exposed himself and instructed kids to defecate on a makeshift barbecue were not the subject of charges, though Judge Robinson dismissed the latter as “far-fetched”.
Bond has previously served two terms of home detention on similar sex charges before being sentenced to more than two years’ imprisonment after a slew of ex-pupils came forward in 2022 and 2023.
The defendant was granted parole in January 2024 and the board heard he had told a psychologist he was “unsure regarding the exact number and names of all his victims”.
Bond admitted his “distorted thinking” and said “at the time he believed he was not causing a great deal of harm”.
He was convicted of the newest indecent assault and remanded on bail ahead of his sentencing next month.
A pattern of behaviour
May 1975: During a trip to Mt Aspiring, Bond slept next to victim, pressed himself against the boy. The victim later awoke to the teacher fondling him.
May 2002: Bond brushed against the pupil, who was in his bunk, with his body and tickled his feet without warning.
Mar 2010: The victim was in bed when Bond sat beside him. The teacher put his hands inside his sleeping bag and rubbed the boy’s back. Later at a swimming hole, he made eye contact with the victim, started winking and pulled his shorts to one side, exposing his genitalia.
Apr 2011: Bond pressed his groin into the victim’s back while appearing to assist with a rock-climbing harness. The next morning, he found the boy in his bunk and rubbed his bare chest.
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