She pleaded for her attacker to be unmasked. Before he was, he sexually abused a 13-year-old
Monday, 3 March 2025
For years Mia Edmonds was forced to tip-toe around a suppression order when sharing details of a sexual assault. But a new Supreme Court ruling means, for the first time, she can name the man who attacked her and he will no longer be free to ‘destroy another little girl's life’. Edward Gay reports.
When Mia Edmonds learned the convicted rapist and sex offender who attacked her had gone on to sexually abuse a 13-year-old girl, she vomited.
“How are you supposed to react to that?” she asks.
She and other young women had implored the courts to lift the name suppression order that stopped Luca Benedict Kercher Fairgray from being publicly identified as a sex offender.
Fairgray had sexually assaulted six girls, including Mia, when he was aged between 14 and 17.
In June 2021, he admitted 10 charges including rape, sexual violation, sexual connection with a young person and doing an indecent act. He was sentenced to a year of home detention and a year of release conditions in April 2022.
The judge described the sentence as a “lucky break” but declined to grant him name suppression.
But Fairgray appealed the decision and his legal fight to keep his identity secret dragged on for a further two years.
Despite losing in the District Court, High Court and Court of Appeal, Fairgray’s name was still suppressed as he waited for his case to be heard in the Supreme Court.
By June 2023, he had served his sentence of home detention and was still subject to release conditions, when he met a 13-year-old girl online.
Fairgray got her pregnant and booked her into an abortion clinic, leaving her to attend with her older sister.
It was only later, when the girl ran away from home, that police became involved and Fairgray was arrested and charged.
The girl had no chance of knowing Fairgray’s history of violent sexual behaviour before inviting him into her home.
“Every woman deserves the choice,” says Mia.
“They deserve to have the opportunity to choose whether that is a person that they want to be near. The fact that he was able to have his name suppressed for this long … because of that, he was able to go and destroy another little girl's life.”
Mia fights back tears, thinking of what lies ahead for the girl.
“She is the same age I was … I know what’s going through her head … and I know the years of healing she has ahead. I would not wish that on my worst enemy.
“I'm so sorry for this girl … she's been failed by the entire system, and that she has had to go through that when it was preventable.”
On Monday afternoon, the Supreme Court lifted the interim suppression order, ending an almost three-year wait to name Fairgray in relation to his first tranche of offending.
Now, for the first time, Mia and the other young women are able to speak freely about what he did to them.
“We've all had to be so careful, and that burden shouldn't be on us. We shouldn't have to be tiptoeing around what he did.”
This is Mia’s story.
Meeting Fairgray
Mia was just 12 years old when she met Fairgray at school.
They shared the same circle of friends and hung out at lunchtime.
Later, as teenagers, they were both part of a group that spent time at the mall and went to the same parties.
“I never saw him as any sort of danger … I trusted him. I thought he was just a normal guy that I could be friends with.”
But that changed when Fairgray started bullying her at school.
It got so bad that she stopped attending.
“My mental health was really bad. I was self-harming, and my mum ended up finding out.”
Complaints to the school did not fix the problem and Mia enrolled at a new school.
She still ran into Fairgray at parties on the weekend.
A party in Western Springs
Mia was 14 when her friend threw a house party.
There was alcohol and everyone was having a good time.
“And then Luca showed up.”
Fairgray was known as the “crazy guy”. On this particular night, Mia remembers him going into the kitchen, grabbing a big jar of lentils and throwing it into the backyard, smashing it.
“All of his friends thought it was funny.”
Fairgray produced a bottle of spirits and called on the girls to “do shots”.
“I was 14, a child, so I was obviously a bit stupid and I didn’t know how much alcohol I could handle and I ended up being quite drunk.”
There was a playfight in the backyard and concerned neighbours called the police.
Mia says the officers just wanted to make sure everyone was safe but the young people overreacted and ran from the house.
About 20 of them ended up in a nearby park. Mia was drunk and stumbling, she broke off from the group and wandered away, looking at her phone.
Fairgray came up behind her and started kissing and touching her.
“I didn’t know what to do or what was going on.”
She pulled away and approached a friend, a male, and asked him for help.
“He stuck up for me and went up to [Fairgray] and went: ‘Hey, could you leave her alone? Because she doesn't want that.’”
Fairgray responded by trying to beat the boy up.
“So I was pretty scared at that point, because I'm thinking: ‘If he's going to try and beat up his friend, who's one of his close friends … what was he going to do to me?’”
The group ended up in a bus stop shelter and Fairgray went after Mia again.
“I ended up with him pinning me against the corner of the bus stop on the ground.”
She tried to push Fairgray away.
“He basically … forced me into a corner while I was very drunk, and could barely stand up at that stage, and he just violated me. And I was really, really, really scared.”
She described feeling like she had left her own body, watching what Fairgray was doing to her from a third person’s perspective.
Fairgray didn’t stop until he was pulled off Mia by another teenager.
The group eventually made their way back to the party house where Fairgray targeted her a third time as she sat on a sofa.
“I just froze, I just gave up … I went limp … I thought there was no point in trying to stop it, because he's going to take what he wants either way.”
The attack only stopped when one of his friends convinced Fairgray to leave.
Later that night Fairgray sent Mia text messages, asking for sex. Mia turned him down.
In the days and weeks following the attacks, Mia alternated between convincing herself “nothing had happened” and blaming herself when she realised the opposite was true.
“I only realised the full extent of what he had done when I found out he had raped one of my friends.”
Mia said some of the young women went to police but were not taken seriously. It was only when they approached police as a group that an investigation was launched.
It was led by two detectives who Mia describes as “the most compassionate and amazing men” she has met.
Sentenced to a year of Xbox
Fairgray was charged with rape, unlawful sexual connection with a child, indecent assault and sexual conduct with a child.
Court documents released to Stuff show Fairgray raped one of the young women in his bedroom at his parents’ house during a party.
He had continued to rape her, despite her pleas for him to stop.
She eventually escaped his bedroom and went to the bathroom where she cried.
By the time she emerged, Fairgray had locked his bedroom door and was sexually assaulting another teenager.
He only stopped when the first girl thumped on his door and demanded he open it.
Fairgray’s case ground its way through the courts and he eventually pleaded guilty.
The months-long wait for the guilty pleas was agonizing.
At sentencing, Fairgray’s lawyer asked Judge Claire Ryan to suppress his client’s name, saying he would experience a modern version of the stocks. He spoke of Fairgray’s family home being pelted with condoms full of dog poo.
But while Fairgray wanted to keep his name secret, Mia and two other survivors took the rare step of asking the court to revoke their automatic right to name suppression.
“I didn't want to be restricted in talking about what had happened to me, because it's not something that I did … It's not something that I should be ashamed of, and I don't think that we should be prevented from talking about our story and what we've been through.”
Mia also chose to address the judge directly. She read her victim impact statement with the recently appointed chief victims advisor Ruth Money by her side.
“His trail of destruction has not just slipped under the radar, it’s been allowed to happen. He has been deliberately seeking out girls and young women and violating them,” she told Judge Ryan.
She pleaded with the judge to decline Fairgray’s application for permanent name suppression and said allowing his name to be published would enable other survivors to come forward.
“Take away his ability to continue the violence he has been committing … do not let this go on.”
Judge Ryan declined the application for name suppression. She started with a prison sentence of seven-and-a-half years before giving Fairgray discounts for his mental health, youth and remorse.
She ended with a sentence of 12 months’ home detention and a further 12 months of release conditions.
The judge told Fairgray he had been given a “lucky break” and that he owed it to the young women to turn his life around.
“I have not imprisoned you because I do not want to see you back here as an older offender, much more skilled in the ways of committing sexual violence,” Judge Ryan said.
Mia remembers being devastated by the sentence.
“We were all just sitting there going, where's our chance? We were children trying to do school, and we didn't get a chance to do that without being assaulted and raped.
“For ripping apart the lives of six girls, he gets to stay home for a year and play Xbox.”
Mia was so upset she stood and walked out of the courtroom before the judge had finished.
“Twelve months at home for what he did to all of us? I wanted to die for more than 12 months as a result of his actions.”
She says what few people realise is the toll this kind of offending has – not just on the survivors – but their friends and family.
The worst ‘I told you so’
“I remember speaking to the other girls when we found out, and all we could say was, we told them, we told the judge how angry and hateful he was towards people and how dangerous he was and how he couldn't be trusted not to reoffend,” says Mia.
“It's the worst ‘I told you so’ that we possibly could have gotten, I wish that we were wrong about him, and he was fine, and he wouldn't have done it again, because he was supposed to be rehabilitated at that point.”
Ironically, those new charges meant that even when the Supreme Court eventually ruled against Fairgray’s final bid for name suppression, he could still not be named.
The courts determined Fairgray’s criminal history could prejudice a jury and endanger his right to a fair trial on his latest charges.
The jury hearing his case were never told he was a convicted rapist and sex offender, or that he had a previous conviction for sexual conduct with a young person.
But despite that, Fairgray was found guilty.
For Mia, the final lifting of the name suppression is crucial.
“He can say: ‘Oh, well, I shouldn't be named because then people are just going to come after me and I've done my time … and I should be able to move on.’ OK, well, what about the people that will never move on?
“What about the people that are still waking up every morning, and the first thing they think about is you and what you did to them?
“I just don't think that's a privilege that he should get. And I don't think that anyone who's done what he has done should get that privilege. If you don't want your life to be destroyed, don't destroy other people's lives.”
Fairgray is due to be sentenced in March for his most recent offending.
Following his convictions, Fairgray’s lawyer Susan Gray asked Judge Evangelos Thomas to order a pre-sentence report that includes an assessment for home detention.
Judge Thomas agreed but also had a warning.
“I have to, out of fairness to both of you, should expect that is an unlikely result. I still have to hear from counsel but I don’t want you to have any misapprehension of that.”
Sexual violence: where to get help
Rape Crisis 0800 88 33 00, click link for local helplines.
Victim Support 0800 842 846.
Safetalk text 4334, phone 0800 044 334 webchat safetotalk.nz or email support@safetotalk.nz.
The Harbour Online support and information for people affected by sexual abuse.
Women’s Refuge 0800 733 843
Male Survivors Aotearoa Helplines across NZ, click to find out more (males only).
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 111.
If you or someone you know is in a dangerous situation, click the Shielded icon at the bottom of this website to contact Women's Refuge in a safe and anonymous way without it being traced in your browser history. If you're in our app, visit the mobile website here to access Shielded.