Man accused of sex with 13-year-old told police he was ‘aware of the age difference’

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Police wanted to speak to Luca Benedict Kercher Fairgray about a missing 13-year-old girl.

One of those police officers told the court Fairgray jumped out of his bedroom window and hid under his house when the officer visited the family home.

The police officer said Fairgray also told him he was “aware of the age difference”.

Luca Benedict Kercher Fairgray jumped out his bedroom window and hid under his house when the police came knocking, looking for a missing 13-year-old girl, a court has heard.

Fairgray was 20-years-old at the time and would later tell police he was “aware of the age difference” between him and the girl.

Now aged 21, Fairgray has denied three charges of sexual connection with a young person under 16, and is on trial at the Auckland District Court.

He pleaded guilty to a charge of supplying cannabis to the girl on the first day of his trial.

The Crown’s case is that the girl met Fairgray online and told him she was 13 before they began a relationship involving sex. Fairgray’s lawyers said the girl told their client she was 16.

Three months after meeting Fairgray online, and after getting pregnant and undergoing an abortion, the 13-year-old ran away from home.

Constable Scott Loper said he and Constable Danielle You visited the 13-year-old’s older sister who told him the 13-year-old could be with an older man who she only knew as “Luca”.

Loper said he got further information from his Sergeant, and headed to the Fairgray family home.

He said Fairgray’s father Kenneth Fairgray answered the door.

“I heard a brief rustling from the left side of the house.”

He said Kenneth Fairgray went to get his son but a short time later came back to say his son “had jumped out of his window”.

After a brief look for Fairgray the police left. But Loper said a short time later Kenneth Fairgray phoned him to say he had found his son.

He said when he returned to the house, Fairgray refused to make eye contact.

“He was shaking and covered in cobwebs.”

Loper said Luca Fairgray told him he had heard people asking for him at the front door and that had made him anxious, hence why he jumped out the window.

He said Luca Fairgray later told him that he had run from the police because he was “aware of the age difference”.

Fairgray initially told police that he knew the 13-year-old “as a friend” before his father interrupted and corrected his son that the 13-year-old is “your girlfriend”.

Fairgray told the police that he and the 13-year-old had “broken up” a month ago.

He said he had tried to meet up with the girl two days prior, after exchanging messages online. However, he said he had waited for up to three hours in a supermarket carpark near her home and didn’t end up seeing her.

The jury also heard an opening address from Fairgray’s lawyer, Susan Gray, in which she said her client would give evidence in his own defence.

“The defence accepts this relationship was unsuitable and unacceptable and the termination is something a 13 year-old should never go through,” Gray said.

But she said the defence case is that the 13 year-old told Fairgray she was 16 at the time and he believed that was true.

Gray said while the burden of proof was on the Crown in “99%“ of cases - this was a 1% case where it was up to the defence to prove that Fairgray believed the girl was 16 or older.

She reminded the jurors that they must decide what her client believed while also considering his diagnosis of autism which impacted how he thought and acted.

The trial, before Judge Evangelos Thomas and a jury, is due to begin hearing from Fairgray and other defence witnesses on Wednesday.