Paedophile deported from NZ jailed for 40 years

A civil engineer who committed child-sex offences in New Zealand and South Africa - within a few months of each other - has now received jail sentences in both countries.

In New Zealand in 2001, Alan Keith Pyle, 48, received four years for assaults on two children: five charges of sexual violation and two of indecent assault on a child under 12 years.

Last week in his native South Africa he was jailed for 40 years for abducting and indecently assaulting two children, and life in prison for raping a third.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of kidnapping and three of indecent assault, but denied the rape.

In each country, Pyle was convicted partly on the basis of videos he shot of himself abusing the children in 2000, including children he abducted in South Africa while on a short holiday from New Zealand.

Act MP Deborah Coddington yesterday said that the big variance in jail terms for the same offender committing similar crimes raised the question of perceptions of New Zealand being soft on paedophiles.

"For someone like this dangerously recidivist, appallingly revolting paedophile, it's just as well the South Africans have got him and locked him up for 40 years," she said.

Ms Coddington last week criticised authorities for failing to act on overseas information about people who bought child porn.

Time magazine had questioned whether New Zealand was becoming a "haven for paedophiles" after American agents provided the names of people who received child pornography, and Australia rounded up suspects from those lists but New Zealand did not.

Ms Coddington said that offenders as bad as Pyle should be locked up until they died.

Pyle was described at the weekend by Durban's Independent newspaper as one of the most evil and sadistic child-sex offenders seen in that country.

He grew up in Pietermaritzburg and worked as a road engineer before moving with his wife and sons to Auckland in 1999.

During 2000, he repeatedly assaulted two children in this country, and then returned to South Africa for a short visit in October 2000, during which he kidnapped and assaulted three children.

In October 2001, Pyle was sentenced to four years' jail by a judge in the High Court at Auckland.

A police spokesman yesterday confirmed that after Pyle's conviction, police forwarded "information" to their counterparts in South Africa.

The video of the South African attacks, at Ladysmith, was sent by Interpol to South Africa's Family Violence, Child Protection, and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS), in 2002, about the time that former immigration minister Lianne Dalziel ordered Pyle to be deported.

Pyle - freed on parole in January 2004 - appealed against the order, saying he had undergone treatment, was now a committed Christian, and had some family support, but the Deportation Review Tribunal ruled against him.

In South Africa, Sergeant Yolynn Denness said that when her FCS unit traced the children on the video from Interpol, it emerged that the rape victim had never disclosed the abuse. Pyle admitted kidnapping a brother and sister aged four and six outside Pietermaritzburg, and offering them money.

Four days later, he stopped an 8-year-old girl in Ladysmith and offered her money to get into the car and show him the way to the school.

The judge said that the suffering of the 8-year-old on the video was "profoundly disturbing".

- NZPA