Six months supervision for Palmerston North offender

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Government agencies have just six months to supervise a paedophile feared to be at high risk of reoffending after being released today to his mother's home in Palmerston North.

Although the Parole Board has set 10 conditions on the man's release, which he must live by until December or face re-arrest, it is angering Palmerston North community leaders by refusing to list these while it considers opposition raised by the man's lawyer to their disclosure.

The man, whom the Herald will not name in case this helps to identify his victims, has served almost a full 10-year prison sentence without parole for sexually violating a 23-month-old girl.

He committed the crime soon after his release from Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital, where he was sent in 1989 for raping a 6-year-old female relative, and he is almost certain to be sentenced to preventive detention if he reoffends.

That option was not open to the judge who sentenced him in 1993, before a law change last year broadened the range of crimes subject to preventive detention, under which an offender can be kept in prison for life.

Justice Minister Phil Goff said last night that he still regarded the man as a high-risk offender, even after his voluntary participation in rehabilitation programmes in prison.

Although the man would live under stringent release conditions for six months, Mr Goff acknowledged that the justice system would then reach the end of its legal ability to impose controls on him.

But he said officials were due to report this month on possible ways to strengthen supervision of sex offenders in the community - including giving judges power to extend parole periods for up to 10 years and setting up a limited-access register of paedophiles.

Despite the Parole Board's refusal to disclose the man's release conditions, Mr Goff said he would expect these to include therapeutic counselling and a ban on approaching anyone under 16.

Because the man has served his maximum possible prison sentence, he is unable to be kept on parole, which means he would have to be charged with a new offence rather than be recalled to prison for breaching any conditions.

Parole and the most intensive post-release programme the Probation Service says it has devised for an offender did not stop Barry Allan Ryder from sexually assaulting four Christchurch schoolboys almost as soon as he was left unsupervised last year.

Ryder was sentenced in March to preventive detention with a minimum non-parole period of nine years.

But police have been knocking on doors in the Palmerston North suburb of Highbury to tell neighbours the name of the man being released today, and have appointed an officer to monitor his behaviour and movements.

One mother said a police officer had advised her to escort her daughter to and from school.

Inspector Doug Brew said that because the man was not suspected of any recent offences it would be a breach of police guidelines to "profile" him by distributing leaflets with his photograph or other personal information.

The police had therefore gained the man's permission for limited authority to warn the public verbally about him.

Mr Brew acknowledged a risk that people may take the law into their own hands after being told the man's name, but said the police had to draw "a very fine balance" between a possible vigilante reaction and the safety of children.

Former sex offender treatment programme director and Ngapuhi chief executive Alison Thom said legislation was urgently needed to compel various Government agencies to co-ordinate their activities to monitor paedophiles for up to 10 years, as in Britain.

While supporting a limited-access register to co-ordinate monitoring, she feared naming paedophiles as advocated by Act MP Deborah Coddington, would just drive them underground and possibly make them more dangerous.