A 49-year-old Dunedin man who spent nine years performing sex offences on two children in his care has been jailed for 18 years.
Terry Constable was found guilty on 13 separate charges after a five-day trial.
The offending started around two years after the defendant began a relationship with the girls' mother in 2004.
The victims were around eight years old when he started touching and massaging them.
This progressed to regular instances of rape, with one victim telling the court she was raped at least 50 times.
The offending took place in their home and Constable's workplace, while the younger victim was also extensively violated on a trip to a Bannockburn property with the defendant when she was nine years old.
The 49-year-old then threatened to commit suicide if either of the victims told anyone of the offending.
Crown prosecutor Marie Grills said it was offending at the highest scale, and sought a minimum 16-year jail term.
"The Crown would say the planning and premeditation was at a high level," she said.
Defence counsel David More agreed to the 16-year term, and said there were no aggravating or mitigating factors.
Judge Kevin Phillips told Constable he needed to impose a term that would denounce his offending.
"The scale of offending is high, the breach of trust is high, the nature of the violation is high," he said.
Constable was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.
Earlier, two of his victims gave emotional testimonies in court, and evoked Constable's permanent name suppression.
The elder victim told the court she over-exercised and stopped eating during the time of the offending, and weighed just 18 kilograms when she was 13 years old.
The younger victim started self-harming at 10, and spent some time in a mental health institute in Christchurch.
Judge Phillips said it would be difficult to imagine a higher breach of trust.
"You were their father figure. You had their mother around your finger," he said.
"They were entirely and absolutely vulnerable."
