Outed paedophile sues for $80,000

A convicted paedophile is suing police for $80,000, claiming they breached their powers and violated his privacy by a leaflet drop with a warning and his photograph after his release into a Wellington suburb.

Barry Grant Brown, a 39-year-old beneficiary, told the Wellington District Court yesterday that he lived in fear and was regularly assaulted and abused after being outed by police in 2001.

Brown was freed from Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison and placed in a council flat in Strathmore in July 2001 after serving three and a half years of a five-year jail sentence.

He was convicted in 1998 for pulling a five-year-old boy into a Newtown flat and sexually assaulting him. He had previous convictions for indecent assault on small children from 1982, 1985 and 1990.

His lawyer Dale La Hood said Brown was of limited intellect, suffered from disabilities including severe epilepsy and was illiterate.

He had applied for name suppression but it was turned down in a Court of Appeal hearing yesterday.

Mr Brown's statement claimed police had visited him and taken a photo without a warrant, and that the leaflet drop led to his being physically attacked by strangers.

Mr La Hood told the court his client was seeking compensation of $80,000 - $50,000 for police misconduct and $30,000 for injuries suffered in the assaults against him.

The state had a duty to rehabilitate offenders. Police had breached Brown's confidence and he had lost his privacy after being outed.

"The actions were unlawful and the officers were reckless." There was a "foreseeable consequence of vigilante attack" after the pamphlet drop.

Police used improper means to obtain the photo of Brown and were in a privileged position as a state agency to access information about him, Mr La Hood said.

He read Brown's opening statement, which said he was physically abused on two occasions by men he had never met before, including being pushed down stairs and punched in the mouth.

"When I walked down the street people would come out of their houses and abuse me, yelling things like 'kiddie f*****'."

The abuse continued for the rest of 2001 with one man in Newtown assaulting him every time he attended a programme designed to rehabilitate sexual offenders.

"I was upset, angry and scared about the way I was being treated by the police, the media and the public."

"I was so scared I felt prison was the safest place for me."

- NZPA, STAFF REPORTER