High Court to sentence child sex offender

Convicted sex offender Jared Paul Simmonds, who used a frisbee to lure a seven-year-old girl into a Christchurch kindergarten's grounds, has been assessed by a judge as "a significant and on-going risk to the safety of the community".

He was sent today to the High Court for sentence so that an open-ended preventive detention jail sentence can be considered, Christchurch Court News website reported.

Simmonds was interrupted by an adult before any sex attack happened on January 15.

He had been released from prison on parole on October 7 after serving a two-year, eight-month sentence for doing an indecent act with a girl aged under 12.

One of his parole conditions was that he have no contact with any child aged under 16 unless being supervised by an approved adult.

Christchurch District Court Judge Michael Radford said today Simmonds, 32, had only a superficial understanding of his offending. He seemed to believe it was mainly about the breach of his parole condition.

Simmonds had earlier pleaded guilty and been remanded for sentence in April when the Crown announced it wanted a further remand so that two psychiatric reports could be prepared by health assessors - the necessary step for preventive detention to be considered.

Those reports have been done and Judge Radford said they indicated there were risks, with issues about protection of the public. He noted that Simmonds had already been through the Kia Marama programme for sex offenders while in prison.

Simmonds also had other offences on his record which appeared trivial - "but in the circumstances of your behaviour and the material contained in the reports, they are not trivial".

"It seems to me clear that you don't intellectually have an understanding of your offending," Judge Radford said.

"There appears to be an escalation of your offending and you are attacking victims who are chosen for their vulnerability.

"On each occasion adults intervened before matters could go any further than they did. You show little insight into what you have been doing."

He assessed Simmonds as being someone who came under the provisions for preventive detention as he posed a significant and on-going risk to the safety of the community.

Simmonds planned the offending to meet his sexual needs.

He bought a Frisbee at Riccarton and then cycled to New Brighton and Halswell looking for young girls. At Halswell he found a seven-year-old girl coming out of a dairy.

He asked her to go to a park but she said she was not allowed. However, he waited for her along the road and convinced her to go into a kindergarten grounds to play with the flying disc.

He took her into a back area out of sight "to get her away from parents or other people who might stop them being together," he later told police.

The pair played and then talked for about 10 minutes before the girl's mother and members of the public found them. Police praised the actions of the mother and neighbours who reacted so quickly on the day.

Simmonds, who was described as a vineyard worker, had pleaded guilty to charges of abducting the girl and breaching his parole conditions.

- NZPA