Elderly man escapes trial for 95 indecent assault charges

Leonard James Mulholland has avoided trial on 95 charges of indecent assaults. Photo / File

A 72-year-old Palmerston man has avoided trial on 95 charges of indecent assaults on boys after a High Court judge found he has dementia and is not fit to stand trial.

Leonard James Mulholland will be detained in a treatment facility.

In the High Court at Dunedin yesterday, Justice David Gendall ruled, after hearing from health assessors, Mulholland had vascular dementia.

While Mulholland was not fit to stand trial, Justice Gendall found he had, on the balance of probabilities, committed the vast majority of the alleged offending.

The appropriate response was to order Mulholland be treated as a patient under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, by way of a community treatment order.

Crown counsel Robin Bates said that meant Mulholland would be ''detained securely''.

Details were yet to be finalised.

Justice Gendall will provide detailed reasons for his conclusions, and the details of detention, soon.

In February last year, Mulholland was accused of historic sexual offending against 10 teenage boys over a 30-year period.

He denied all the allegations.

The 95 representative indecency charges covered alleged multiple offences dating back to 1980.

He was arrested in December 2013, after a police investigation.

The charges comprised 52 of committing indecent acts or assaults, 21 of inducing indecent acts, 17 of unlawful sexual connection and five of sodomy.

The oldest charges dated back to 1980 and 1981 and consisted of alleged sodomy and indecency offences against a boy under the age of 16 in Dunedin, Mosgiel, Arrowtown and Alexandra.

Thirty-three charges - one of sodomy, 16 of indecent assault and 16 of inducing indecent acts - related to alleged offending against another teenager in Dunedin and Mosgiel between 1980 and 1983, and three of indecent assault and one of unlawful sexual connection against a third teenager in Mosgiel and Dunedin in 1985 and 1986.

Two charges accused Mulholland of indecently assaulting another teenager in Dunedin and Alexandra in 1987 and 1988, and another 29 related to 15 alleged incidents of indecent assault and 14 of sexual violation of a fifth boy between 1990 and 1992 in Middlemarch, Waikouaiti, Mosgiel, Palmerston and Dunedin.

Other indecent assaults are alleged against two teenage boys in Dunedin in 1990, as well as between 1991 and 1995.

The most recent charges alleged indecent assaults against three other boys in Palmerston in 2006 and 2007 and in 2009 and 2010.