Warning: Graphic content

Former NSW families minister Gareth Ward will spend at least the next three years and nine months in jail for raping a political staffer and indecently assaulting an 18-year-old man, both whom he met through his position of power, in crimes a judge described as “deliberate and predatory”.

The 44-year-old was convicted in July of indecently assaulting an 18-year-old man three times at his Shoalhaven home on the South Coast in 2013 and having sexual intercourse without consent with a 24-year-old political staffer at his Potts Point apartment in 2015.

At Parramatta District Court on Friday, Judge Kara Shead sentenced the former Kiama MP to five years and nine months’ jail with a non-parole period of three years and nine months.

Shead took into account special cir

See Full Page