The boarding-house rapist released from prison to live in another boarding house has been moved on - without a word of apology from the Department of Corrections.
Instead, officials working for the department tried to fob off questions by saying Lokeni Hui, who raped a 47-year-old widow in
2001, had a right to privacy.
His release to two Auckland boarding hostels came after he served just two-thirds of an eight-and-a-half-year sentence for raping the widow who lived in the room opposite him at Central City Backpackers in Auckland.
The Probation Service, a branch of the Department of Corrections, released Hui to live in Budget Accommodation in Albert St and then The Grafton Residences on Nugent St. Manager of both hostels, Judi Busch, said yesterday: "I want him out."
And Mike Cotton, trustee of the Dominion Trust which owns around 500 beds throughout Auckland, said he wanted to know why residence managers were not told Hui was a boarding house rapist.
He said he had rung Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor yesterday to express his anger and demand answers. "It doesn't sit very well with me. It is a situation where they allowed the man to slip through the cracks," Cotton, a Symonds St restaurateur said. "If we didn't have the bloody Privacy Act things like this would not happen."
Shortly before 5pm, a Department of Corrections van transported Hui away from the centre. In a written statement, Marie Faith-Allen, area manager of the Auckland Community Probation Service did not address why Hui had been allowed to live in a similiar place to the one in which he raped a tourist.
"The Community Probation Service can confirm that intensive management of the offender has continued to occur. As a consequence he is being moved to new accommodation approved by the Service as appropriate," says the statement.
Court documents reveal that the Central City Backpackers rape came just two months after the Samoan man was deported from Australia to New Zealand over a series of violent crimes. Two of the Australian crimes landed him behind bars, including one in which he severely wounded his victim with a machete and threatened a witness of that attack.
