Allan Titford during his High Court sentencing for 39 charges, principally of rape and assaulting children with weapons, perjury, obstructing justice, arson, and recklessly discharging a firearm.
A farmer jailed for rape, perjury and arson has lashed out at the Parole Board, claiming he is being treated unfairly because there is no suitable accommodation for him outside prison.
“You are cutting me off and kicking me in the guts. Your system will not give me a fair go,” Allan Titford told board members this week as he was denied parole.
Titford said he had several accommodation options despite being told there was no approved address.
“We are just going around in circles,” he said.
Titford was jailed for 24 years in 2013 on 39 sex and violence charges spanning more than two decades.
Proceedings got heated at times during this week’s hearing as he repeatedly raised concerns.
“The system has failed to have me ready for parole,” he said.
He asked the board if he needed to go to the High Court. Again, he was told there was no approved release address for him.
Titford said there were suitable addresses in Australia and the Waikato, saying he had so far put forward 16 addresses and that he kept getting denied parole.
Panel convenor Martha Coleman told Titford to stay focused on the hearing.
Titford told the board he could “go and get on with it” if he was released to one of the addresses.
He was then reminded that he was under sentence until 2037. He said it was his eighth parole hearing and that he was at low to average risk.
One of his Northland homes was destroyed by arson in 2023, the third owned by Titford that had been burned to the ground, including one that went up in flames in 1992 on his Maunganui Bluff property which he was found guilty of setting alight.
He initially blamed the blaze on Te Roroa hapū members after a dispute over the land.
Titford was convicted by a jury on charges of assault with a weapon, assault, male assaults female, assault on a child, sexual violation, arson, using a document with intention to defraud, threatening to kill, assault using a weapon, perjury, attempting to pervert the course of justice and discharging a firearm.
The sexual offences were committed against his former wife, Susan Cochrane, who waived her right to name suppression so Titford could be named.
Titford denied the offending and went to the Court of Appeal in 2017, arguing he was unfit to stand trial.
He lost that appeal and subsequently took his case to the Supreme Court, where he applied for an extension of the time limit to file another appeal against the 2013 conviction and sentence arguing there was a miscarriage of justice.
The Supreme Court rejected his application in 2019.
Coleman told Titford he needed to focus on why he should be released from custody.
Titford then asked a long-term supporter to speak on his behalf.
His supporter said Titford was frustrated, that it was the third time that a lack of a suitable address had been presented as a reason for no parole.
The supporter said he had known Titford since 2013 and his friend remained “steady and calm”. He then suggested the meeting be concluded.
Probation said there was still a lot of work to be done, that Titford had provided a number of addresses, but there were still issues around clarity.
Because of his convictions, the options were limited. The board heard Titford was being compliant in prison.
Coleman asked Titford if he had thought about getting legal representation, he said he had already spent money and did want to get another mortgage.
Coleman told him he could seek assistance through Legal Aid.
Coleman told Titford he could theoretically be paroled to Australia, but the board would have to suspend the condition that he not leave New Zealand.
The board members would not suspend that condition unless they were satisfied, she said.
“There is no oversight. At the moment it is the Parole Act that is standing in your way; it is not just about an approved address, it is not the only piece of the puzzle.”
Coleman said it was concerning that Titford had not been approved for guided release, a process where eligible prisoners, primarily those serving longer sentences, are gradually reintegrated into the community before their full release date.
Coleman told Titford he needed to undertake reintegration activities.
Titford said he was responsible for a recycling programme in prison, “the prison’s grubbiest job”.
A former Far North mayoral candidate, Titford rose to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s as he battled the Crown over two Māori reserves that were subject to longstanding Waitangi claims, on his Maunganui Bluff farm, north of Dargaville.
The Waitangi Tribunal recommended the farm be returned to local iwi.
As part of his campaign, Titford burnt down a house on his property and blamed it on iwi.
The farm was eventually bought by the Crown and handed back to Māori.
Twenty-one years after Titford tried to frame a Māori community for crimes he committed, the people he blamed offered their thanks to Titford’s wife who brought him to justice.
In 2013, Te Roroa kaumatua Manos Nathan said the iwi were relieved Titford’s crimes and the lengths he went to to frame innocent people had finally been exposed.
Susan Cochrane revealed his dark secrets by laying a complaint against him alleging sexual assault and other violent acts.
In a statement, she read during the sentencing, Cochrane said: “Living with him and all his lies and hatred towards the Government and the Te Roroa people was very hard because he could not take out his hatred on them so he took it out on us.”
She said he had kept her “as a slave” for 22 years.
Nathan said that for years his whānau and wider hapū had been subject to “scurrilous claims”, including allegations in the media, and had been castigated by other Māori.
In sentencing Titford, Judge Duncan Harvey said it was time the people of New Zealand learned the truth about him.
“You decided that the Government was not co-operating over compensation. One of the tragedies of your actions in destroying your own property is that you’ve blamed that on Māori and allowed to broadcast to the entire country all [the] damage caused by them.”
Judge Harvey said Titford’s arson of a farmhouse was an elaborate scheme to elicit sympathy from the Government and the public.
The Parole Board will see Titford again in April 2026.
Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently he was editor of the Hauraki-Coromandel Post, based in Whangamatā. He was previously deputy editor of the Cook Islands News.