High risk paedophile to be released in Palmerston North

9.00pm

A convicted paedophile being released to live in Palmerston North is a "high risk" person, Justice Minister Phil Goff said tonight.

Sometime ago he had asked police and the Corrections Department to look specifically at the man, Mr Goff told NZPA.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for 10 years for sexually violating a 23-month-old girl in 1993, shortly after being released from Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital.

In 1989, he had been sent to Lake Alice for raping a six-year-old girl.

Mr Goff said that, legally, the man could no longer be kept in jail.

"He was given a finite sentence and he's come to the end of that sentence," he said.

Authorities could set conditions for the man, such as where he was to live and what programmes he was to attend, for six months after his release.

"Both police and corrections have indicated they will be monitoring him very closely indeed, to the maximum extent they are able," Mr Goff said.

He did not know the details of that monitoring.

Mr Goff said he regretted the man had been sentenced under old legislation, rather than under the Sentencing Act which came into effect in July last year.

Had the man been dealt with under the new law it was highly likely he would have been sentenced to preventive detention, he said.

There would have been no finite release date, and someone receiving that sentence would be subject to lifetime conditions if they were released, and could be recalled if anything in their behaviour indicated they continued to be a risk.

"If he (the Palmerston North man) were to offend again it would be inevitable he would get preventive detention, and he will at least have that threat hanging over him," Mr Goff said.

He did not want to comment on the police decision to inform the man's neighbours he was to be released, or that the Parole Board apparently believed the safest place for him to live would be with his mother.

"I can't really comment on their judgement in terms of operational decision making. They will have the same concerns I have, that he is a high risk."

There were arguments both for and against the police action, he said.

National Party police spokesman Tony Ryall today said Mr Goff needed to assure the people of Palmerston North that everything that could be done, would be done to prevent the man re-offending.

"Mr Goff also needs to confirm that no expense will be spared in making sure this man is rehabilitated and that the community is protected," Mr Ryall said.

"Mr Goff made his reputation riding a wave of public concern about this case and the case of another paedophile Barry Allan Ryder," he said.

Ryder pleaded guilty in January to kidnapping a nine-year-old boy, indecently assaulting two boys aged under 12, and having sexual connection with a boy. He committed the offences while on parole after serving 7-1/2 years of a nine-year sentence for kidnapping and trying to rape an 11-year-old Wanganui boy.

"In light of his criticism about the man's release in the mid-1990s, Mr Goff should be assuring the public that he himself is satisfied that the Department of Corrections and other agencies have suitable plans in place," Mr Ryall said.

"The authorities can only set conditions on this man for a very limited period, and Palmerston North has a right to know what plans have been put in place to ensure safety after that period."

Meanwhile, the police action in alerting the man's new neighbours would create a "climate of fear", Council for Civil Liberties chairman Michael Bott told the Dominion Post.

"Quite often people who are sex offenders who are released don't go and do it again. Sometimes they do. In essence, by doing what they (the police) are doing they are making it practically impossible for that guy to reintegrate into the community," Mr Bott said.

"It's rather sad. It really is making the guy into a social leper."

- NZPA