A state jury found Moiliili karate sensei Michael Shimabukuro guilty Wednesday of molesting one of his students starting in 2005 when the boy was 12.
The jury found Shimabukuro, 34, guilty of three counts of third-degree sexual assault covering the period 2005 to 2007.
He faces a five-year prison term on each count at sentencing in January.
After receiving the verdicts, Circuit Judge Randal Lee revoked Shimabukuro’s supervised release, imposed a $150,000 bail and ordered him into custody.
Defense lawyer Benjamin Ignacio said he considers the jury’s findings a split verdict.
"The jury rejected all of the class A allegations of sexual penetration," Ignacio said.
Shimabukuro had been charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of third-degree sexual assault.
The jury found Shimabukuro guilty of the two third-degree assaults, not guilty of one first-degree sexual assault and guilty of the third-degree assault charge for the other count of first-degree sexual assault.
Ignacio said Shimabukuro will consider an appeal.
The victim testified that he was sexually assaulted at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii in Moiliili, where Shimabukuro leased space for a dojo, and in an adjacent office building.
Another former student testified that during training sleepovers at the dojo, Shimabukuro provided his underage students alcohol, pornography and used on them a sexual organ size-enhancement device.
The victim told his parents of the sexual assaults in 2007.
After that, a parent of another student said a group of parents confronted Shimabukuro with the allegations and tried to get Shimabukuro’s mother, a teacher at the school, to intervene.
In 2009, the parents of the victim reported the sexual assaults to police.
