A judge has issued a strong warning after a sex offender awaiting sentence received a threat by text message.
He forwarded the threat to his lawyer, Mark Callaghan, and an email print-out of it was put before Christchurch District Court Judge Raoul Neave at a sentencing today, where
the 30-year-old offender was jailed for three years.
It was not possible to say who the original text had come from, and crown prosecutor Deirdre Elsmore told the court she had spoken to the victim's family, who had no idea who had sent it.
Judge Neave said he wished to make it "very plain" that if there was any attempt to administer any form of justice outside the system to the prisoner, it would be dealt with very severely.
He said justice was not an exercise of revenge or vengeance, and penalties were for the courts - and no-one else - to decide.
"I think that is something the family would agree with wholeheartedly," said Mrs Elsmore.
The Templeton man does not have name suppression, but both defence and crown lawyers expressed concern that publication would lead to identification of the teenage girl involved.
He was convicted at trial of indecently assaulting her when she was aged 13, and five counts of sexual activity with her - oral sex and intercourse - when she was aged 15.
Judge Neave said the offending caused significant disruption and upset.
"To some extent the victim's teenage years have been over-shadowed by this offending."
The offending had been mainly in the context of a relationship which had continued over about nine months.
The accused had defended the charges but was convicted at a jury trial. He was acquitted of several other charges.
The offender had no previous convictions and had expressed remorse, but the offences would have been too serious to consider a sentence of home detention.
He imposed a three-year jail term, and recommended that the man be sent to the Kia Marama programme for sex offenders, while in prison.
He told the court: "Sentencing you is not an exercise in revenge. This is an exercise in doing justice. Those who come to this day with revenge in their hearts need to think very closely about their own attitudes."
- NZPA
