Sex offender John Lindsay Ellis appears in the High Court at Auckland for sentencing. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Sex offender John Lindsay Ellis appears in the High Court at Auckland for sentencing. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
John Lindsay Ellis, 79, has been sentenced to prison for indecent assaults in 2023.
Justice David Johnstone declined a preventive detention request, citing Ellis’ infirmity, but imposed a minimum imprisonment term.
He remains a high risk to the community, according to psychological tests.
An elderly, high-risk sex offender whose background has been repeatedly suppressed by the courts was living in an emergency housing motel where children also resided when he victimised two people in 2023.
“Something is not right up here,” John Lindsay Ellis, now 79, confessed to investigators a short whileafter an acquaintance caught him in the act of abusing a 4-year-old boy at the motel and he was told to call 111 on himself.
For police and prosecutors, it was the last straw.
Johnstone, however, declined the request due in part to Ellis’ infirmity. Large swathes of his decision have been suppressed - a trade-off, of sorts, that has allowed the media to instead name Ellis.
The defendant hunched over in a wheelchair during the hearing, unable to hear without a headset and occasionally grimacing, moaning or wiping away tears. At one point, he reached for the hand of a security officer tasked with sitting beside him in the dock, clutching it briefly after defence lawyer Rosemary Thomson suggested it might provide him comfort.
John Lindsay Ellis appears in the High Court at Auckland for sentencing after abusing two people - an adult and a child - at a motel where he was living in 2023. The Crown asked that he be sentenced to preventive detention. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
She described her client as “compromised physically and cognitively”.
“You can see with your own eyes,” Thomson told the judge. “The reality is, upon release, Mr Ellis would be looking at an aged care facility.”
The judge acknowledged Ellis’ decline but noted, despite that, the 2023 incidents show he still clearly poses an ongoing danger to the community.
‘I got caught’
Ellis pleaded guilty in the Manukau District Court in August to one count of indecent assault on an adult, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment, and one count of indecent assault of a child, which normally carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
The case was transferred to the High Court because of the Crown’s preventive detention request
Ellis’ adult victim had been in the defendant’s motel room as part of his job. Ellis hugged then groped him before the man pushed him away and left.
“On two prior occasions, the defendant had approached the complainant and hugged him in a way which made the complainant feel uncomfortable,” court documents state.
The 4-year-old victim was targeted a month later when Ellis lured him and his younger sister into his room from a nearby playground. Another occupant from the motel came to visit the defendant and located the two children in his room. She removed the children and returned them to their family.
The defendant later told an associate from the motel that he had abused a young boy and “got caught”. The associate told the defendant that he needed to call the police. The defendant called 111 shortly afterwards.
Ellis also admitted to police he had done “the same thing” to the boy two months earlier.
“The boy’s mother has reported how unhappy she is about what happened to him, and that it has affected their family significantly,” Justice Johnstone said.
“The boy became vulnerable as you coaxed him into your unit, the indecent acts you performed on him were intrusive, and they had, and seem likely in future to continue to have, considerable victim impact.”
The 2023 incident, while disturbing, would not normally be considered serious enough on its own to request a sentence of preventive detention.
There were “things that have brought you to this point”, the judge said.
“I note that much of it is the subject of non-publication orders made in previous proceedings,” he explained. “For that reason, I will issue a redacted written version of these remarks, suitable for publication.”
The Herald and other media in the courtroom were ordered not to publish the judge‘s oral remarks until his heavily redacted written version was released several days later.
An entire section was redacted aside from the written version’s single-word subheading: “Background”.
The publicly available version does note, however, that Ellis engaged in multiple sessions of individual psychological treatment between 2008 and 2018.
“Despite these efforts, [a consultant psychologist] considers you to show little insight into risk mitigation and management,” the judge said. “I agree.
Justice David Johnstone presides over a hearing in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig
“Your distorted thinking, involving elements of self-justification and victim blaming, and your deviant sexual interests towards children appear entrenched. Your rehabilitative efforts, such as they have been, appear to have failed.”
A consultant psychiatrist, meanwhile, noted in his report that Ellis told him candidly that the only way to stop his offending in the community would have to involve him “being watched”.
“That may be an unfortunate admission for you to have made, Mr Ellis, but nonetheless it is a realistic one, at least insofar as I take you to be referring to sexual offending,” Justice Johnstone said.
‘Adequate protection’
In considering preventive detention, Justice Johnstone noted that he was first required to decide if a determinate sentence would provide adequate protection for society.
As part of that evaluation, he also had to consider whether a less-restrictive extended supervision order - with parole-like conditions for up to 10 years after a determinate sentence is completed - would achieve the same purpose.
Justice Johnstone determined that it would. Both sides are in agreement, he noted, that Ellis would be almost guaranteed to qualify for an extended supervision order, also referred to as an ESO, upon release from prison.
“In my view, the substantial prospect of an ESO being made at around the time of your mandatory release ... together with your diminishing physical capacities at that point mean that adequate protection for society will be available,” Justice Johnstone said.
John Lindsay Ellis appears in the High Court at Auckland for sentencing after admitting he sexually abused two people. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
The judge instead ordered a sentence of three years and nine months’ imprisonment. The starting point for the two charges combined, based on similar cases, was three and a half years. It was then reduced by 20% for his guilty pleas but increased by a year to account for Ellis’ suppressed “personal circumstances”.
Ellis’ lawyer had sought an uplift of less than a year, taking into account his childhood and his current mental health issues. The judge declined.
“In cases such as yours, there is some room for the purposes of public protection to justify going beyond what would otherwise be the upper level of a sentence,” he explained.
Justice Johnstone agreed with the Crown that, if preventive detention was not imposed, he should consider a minimum term of imprisonment. Inmates are generally eligible to begin applying for parole after serving one-third of their sentence.
Ellis, however, will have to wait until he has served at least two-thirds of his sentence to apply.
“My decision relating to the adequacy of societal protection depends, to some degree, upon your diminishing physical capacities as you age,” Justice Johnstone said. “A minimum period of imprisonment of two years and six months, running as it will from the date of your arrest in November 2023, is necessary primarily for the relevant purpose of community protection.”
Ellis has remained in jail while awaiting trial and sentencing since going to police, meaning he has already served a year and a half of the sentence.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
