Dog stabber jailed for sex offences

The man who cruelly knifed police dog Edge in a stand-off with police in Hastings last year has been sentenced to preventive detention on the child sex charges he was trying to evade at the time.
The rare sentence handed down to Graham Leslie Ashcroft was ordered in the High Court in Napier yesterday, when Justice Graham Lang imposed a minimum term of five years, in addition to the sentence of two 1/2 years the 54-year-old Ashcroft is serving for the attack on police dog Edge and officer Dave Whyte, which happened on June 6 last year.
At the time, Ashcroft, from northern Hawke's Bay, was on the run after failing to appear in court on charges of sexual violation and other indecent acts relating to repeated abuse of two girls in 1998, and another of committing an indecent on another girl in January last year.
All of the girls were aged under 10 at the time they were abused, and a major factor in Justice Graham Lang's decision was Ashcroft's previous record, including a sentence of four-and-a-half years in 1988 for other sex offences involving young girls.
Considering reports which included the required psychiatric and psychological assessment of Ashcroft by two specialists, Justice Lang considered the abuser was at high risk of reoffending if his problems were not addressed.
In custody since being apprehended during the standoff at Maraekakaho last year, apparently intent on taking his own life, Ashcroft will not be eligible to be considered for release before the end of 2012, but it may happen only with expert surety that it is safe for him to be released into the community again.
Reports showed that Ashcroft, whose three adult children from a marriage which lasted 12 years were not the victims of the abuse, lacked insight into the impact of the offending.
His belated claims of remorse and wishes to access treatment for his problems had to be balanced against his failure to make use of such opportunities in the past, the Judge said.
Ashcroft committed the offences at times of stress, using the victims to satisfy his needs, and Justice Lang said he believed he groomed not only the girls, but also their parents who now felt guilty about letting their children down by trusting Ashcroft to be alone with them.
In one set of offences, a victim was allowed to go horse-riding with Ashcroft on a farm, and he would start molesting the girl as she sat in front of him on the horse, as soon as he was out of sight of others on the property.
Offences were committed when he stopped in a paddock and lay the girl on a horse blanket in a paddock. Her sister was abused in a woolshed on the property.
The only factor in Ashcroft's favour was his guilty pleas, avoiding the necessity of having the victims give evidence before a jury, but the Judge noted the pleas were entered only on the day the trial was to start.
Throughout most of the sentencing, Ashcroft sat with his hand covering his face. As the sentencing ended, there was clapping in the public gallery, a woman called Ashcroft a "mongrel," and outside a woman who said she was friend of a victim's family said: "He should have been shot a long time ago."
Meanwhile, in an unrelated case Justice Lang yesterday sentenced Napier man Jonathon Craig, 39, to four years and six months in jail for similar abuse of two young girls under the age of 10 in a house adjacent to a Napier school.
Noting that in ordinary circumstances Craig would be eligible to be considered for parole after a third of the sentence, Justice Lang accepted the approach of Crown prosecutor Steve Manning and ordered a minimum term of two years and three months.
Some of the offences, committed last year, are alleged to have been committed with a boarder said to have joined-in after becoming aware of Craig's indulgences last year.
Craig, who had no previous convictions, had pleaded guilty to charges of sexual violation and committing indecent acts, and it was revealed yesterday that he had agreed to give evidence against the second man who has pleaded not guilty.
The judge said the girls' parents felt they had let their daughters down by entrusting them to Craig's care.