Sex offender may be targeting children, police warn

File photo / Richard Robinson

A serial sex offender may be targeting children and young women in Mangere following a number of attacks in the last two months.

Parents are urging parents to take their children to and from school.

According to TV3, police have arrested a man following an attack on another woman in the area today, but would not say if he was connected to the earlier sex attacks .

However, police did believe a sex attack on a young mother last Thursday to be linked to a "brazen" attack on two girls over the last few weeks, said Detective Senior Sergeant Daryl Harper, from the Mangere child abuse team.

In Thursday's attack, a man grabbed a 28-year-old woman pushing her son in a pram in a walkway between Cape Rd and Mascot Ave, police said.

She punched him and he fled. The man was described as Polynesian, aged between 18 and 20, and 165cm tall. He wore a dark green hoodie sweatshirt and dark jeans.

On Monday last week, an eight-year-old girl and her six-year-old sister were walking home from school on the walkway .

The elder child was sexually violated by a Maori or Polynesian man while her young sister screamed for help, Mr Harper said.

The girls' father heard the screams and chased the attacker, who fled on foot on Windrush Close into a nearby park, and disappeared.

The man was described as Polynesian and wore a black baseball cap, a white hooded sweatshirt with a black or dark collar.

On September 8 a 12-year-old girl was attacked by a man on the walkway, near the Mangere Pools. He grabbed her from behind and she was indecently assaulted.

Mr Harper said police had also received recent reports of an unidentified male approaching young females and asking to touch them in a sexual way.

"Police urge the Mangere community in and around this area to be vigilant and parents to accompany their children to and from school, furthermore to come forward with any information they have in regard to these brazen attacks on vulnerable young children."

- NZPA