Chris King is one of the worst kind of sexual predators you can get.
As a St John ambulance officer he used the instant trust that organisation engenders to prey on women who were in very vulnerable emotional states.
King was yesterday found guilty in the High Court at Napierto eight counts of sexual assault of four women. He had denied all the charges.
One of his victims was a 15-year-old girl who made a traumatised call to the 111 emergency number after her boyfriend had beaten her. Little did she realise that the worst part of her day was still to come. She was not the only victim who was in a traumatised state and needed the professional care of a trained medic, instead of a sexual deviant who preyed on those in need. His other three victims were a woman suffering depression and threatening to harm herself, a young woman with a terminal illness, and a woman who suffers from temporary paralyses.
It beggars belief that a man who was trained to look after sick people would betray them and the organisation he worked for in such a vile way.
St John runs a wonderful service in the Bay and the sick actions of a criminal like King should in no way detract from the good work that the organisation does.Your heart goes out to those poor women who were already suffering before King got hold of them. Let's hope they are able to find a way out of the hell they will have been going through.
We can all learn from cases like this. We need to ensure that all organisations or clubs or services that deal with the young, the old and the vulnerable, get robust systems in place to ensure that abusers and molesters do not get into positions of trust where they can commit their crimes.
