Frank Russell Walmsley was trusted with the care of teenagers for many years but he used his status as a caregiver and life coach as a front. North Otago reporter Hamish MacLean looks back at the actions of a man who was once a well-regarded member of society.
From 1995 to 2000, 70 girls and boys passed through the Oamaru Child and Youth family home.
At the hands of Frank Walmsley, who ran the home with his wife, some of those children, already dealing with troubles of their own, were to endure the most horrific experiences of their lives - while in the care of the State.
Some of his victims were under 12 years old when he started sexually abusing them.
Walmsley, a father of three, was well known in Oamaru and involved in the local community.
He was a Territorial soldier and a member of local clubs and groups.
Residents of the small town were apparently unaware of his darker side.
In 2000, a girl under his care at the Tern St home complained to a supervisor that Walmsley had assaulted her.
He was investigated by police and not charged but the investigation led to the cancellation of his and his wife's contract with Child, Youth and Family.
Walmsley later began training in alternative medicine.
Under the guise of life coaching, he took girls into his care.
Twelve years later a second girl complained to police.
The investigation
The investigation into Walmsley's conduct was renewed.
Police tried to contact all of the people who had lived at the home when Walmsley and his wife were caregivers.
They only asked those they could find, and who would co-operate with the investigation, about Frank Walmsley if the interviewee mentioned the name first.
The process led to three new complainants, two girls and one boy, coming forward.
Eventually, investigators identified four victims from Walmsley's time as a Child, Youth and Family caregiver and four from when he practised alternative medicine as a life coach in the town.
After a search of his Christchurch home (he had moved to Christchurch in 2011) Walmsley was arrested on July 29, 2014.
Name suppression was lifted in December 2014 in order to help the police with their inquiries.
Walmsley was facing 48 charges at the time.
By the time he went to trial in the High Court at Timaru, in April this year, the number of charges had risen to 101.
It took 45 minutes at the beginning of the trial for court staff to put the charges to him, to which he responded, without visible emotion, "not guilty'' 101 times.
The number of charges was reduced to 82 during the trial but the maximum number of charges Walmsley could have been convicted on was 60, as 22 were alternative charges.
Thirteen of the charges were for rape and 19 for unlawful sexual connection.
Nine charges were for nine charges of sexual conduct with minors.
More than half the charges (49) were laid as representative charges, meaning they took into account more than one offence of a similar nature.
The trial
Over the course of the three-week trial, Crown prosecutor Andrew McRae painted a picture of an opportunistic predator who "had an abnormal sexual interest in young teenage people''.
In total, 38 Crown witnesses were called, including victims who shared candid and graphic details of sexual assaults that changed their lives forever.
Walmsley was "lucky to escape charges'' in 2000, Mr McRae said.
He questioned why Walmsley would then, five years later, begin again to put himself in situations where he was alone with "young, vulnerable teenage girls''.
Acting as a life coach, Mr McRae said Walmsley offended "whenever he pleased, and whenever he chose''.
"He held a position of power; who would these [girls] complain to?''
Walmsley, who began offending when he was 36, was found guilty on 29 charges against four victims when he practised the alternative therapy known as Emotional Freedom Technique in his role as a life coach from 2005 to 2012.
He was found guilty on 23 charges involving another four victims during his time at the Child, Youth and Family home.
Key evidence
Walmsley approached his first victim in the shower one morning when the family home was empty.
He pulled her out of the shower and threw her to the floor before raping her, bending her over with her head shoved into the hand basin.
The court was shown police photographs of the scar that remains on the back of her head when she crashed into a faucet during the assault.
The girl slept with a knife under her pillow after that.
The court heard Walmsley forced girls to "dress up'' or dance, even dressing a girl in his wife's lacy underwear and his daughter's clothing.
He gave his victims gifts - clothing, jewellery, fast food, cigarettes and alcohol were all bought as a means of keeping the girls under his control.
During the investigation into his conduct at the Child, Youth and Family home in 2000, an agitated Walmsley pulled his supervisor aside minutes before a meeting at the home to tearfully admit buying the girl "a pair of jeans, a watch, and some necklaces'', gifts that he had kept secret from his wife.
He photographed the girls.
And while police could not find naked photographs of the girls in their investigation, a police digital forensic analyst recovered deleted files from Walmsley's cellphone of the girls and the "same or similar'' photos from a laptop.
The analyst, Luke Robinson, also found a program to securely delete files.
Further, he found an application used for peer-to-peer sharing on the laptop, which showed searches for the terms "vidio (sic)'', "child'', "underage'', "sex'', "children of the night'', "videos'', "pre-teen'', and "pre-adolescent''.
Victims were also able to describe a vibrator Walmsley used on them, which belonged to his wife.
Walmsley blames victims
On April 26 when the jury foreman began reading out what would be the first of the 52 guilty verdicts, members of his family who had come to support Walmsley, began to break down.
His wife and daughter sobbed in the public gallery.
As he was led away, his son called out to him from the public gallery: "The truth will come out, Dad. Innocent.''
His defence was that the girls he was caring for were "difficult to deal with, suspicious, manipulative, devious, and dishonest''.
There were allegations in court that a plot had been hatched by one complainant to set him up.
His family defended him during the trial - his wife and daughter both appeared as witnesses.
Walmsley denied all the charges against him.
He did not give evidence.
