The poisonous charm of Peter Liddell

By CATHERINE MASTERS

It began with a lift in a white van. The polite Englishman was shifting some furniture for the boy's mother. It was a cash job and the boy was invited for the ride.

The mother wanted to go with them but Peter Liddell said there was not enough room, unless she wanted to squash in the back. So she stayed behind.

The man dubbed New Zealand's most dangerous paedophile was back at work.

It was 2002. Liddell had been out of prison since 1998 following convictions for 17 sex offences mainly against boys and teenagers when he was a counsellor at Kings College and a social worker at the former Auckland Hospital Board. His offending had spanned 20 years, leaving a wake of ruined lives.

But Liddell had done his time, serving four years of a seven-year sentence. He had been on a sex offender course while inside, and his parole period, which had stated he could not associate with anyone under 16, was over. He was a free man and could do as he pleased.

The former British policeman did odd jobs in Manurewa where he lived with his mate Dave, another paedophile.

The mother, a sole parent from the same area, did not recognise him or his name, which he said was Peter Little. Soon Liddell offered her 15-year-old son handyman work at $10 an hour. "I actually thought it was quite a good idea for my son to earn a bit of pocket money," she told the Weekend Herald.

Next, Liddell started enticing the boy to the bach he used regularly at Graham's Beach at the Manukau Heads, saying they could fish and have barbecues. He would buy the boy a go-cart. He never did.

No one had told the Graham's Beach residents who the man was in the end bach, hidden away overlooking the sea, so no one knew there was anything to worry about.

In court this week, Liddell, now 58, pleaded guilty to sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection while the boy was staying with him at the bach.

The boy, praised by the police for having the courage to come forward, stayed outside the courtroom. His mother was there, though, feeling sick as the charge was read out.

"It was gut wrenching. I had to swallow. Someone else reading it, it hit home. It was my baby, that happened to my baby."

Hearing the charge, which involved Liddell performing oral sex on her son, was worse than seeing him again. She had seen him outside the court before the session began with his big sunglasses on. He did not want to look at her but there was nowhere to hide. "He just looked guilty."

The mother says she used to have a good relationship with her son but when Liddell began slowly developing his own relationship with him, hers became strained.

The boy became withdrawn, resentful of her and secretive. They argued over trivial things. She found out later Liddell was playing mind games, planting ideas and turning her son against her.

She says Liddell took him to the bach three times over five or six months and at the end of the time her son moved into the spare room at Liddell's Manurewa home.

She became suspicious early on. Someone told her Liddell was gay, and a girlfriend said she would not let her son go to the bach with him, asking why he was taking such an interest in the boy.

So she rang the police, asking them to check out a man called Peter Little. They said they had no information on that name. But she became more suspicious.

She asked a lot of questions and received answers that did not make sense. He told her he was grieving for his wife who had died but would not show her any photographs. Liddell's ex-wife is alive and they have two sons.

When she started hearing how Liddell conducted himself at the bach, her alarm mounted. "When he'd had a shower he'd come around making like he'd dropped his towel."

She heard how he told her son to wear his underpants in the shower and demonstrated how to soap himself under his underpants, then told him both their underpants had to go into a bucket of disinfectant. It was weird, she said.

But Liddell tried to reassure her. "He would get a bit fired up and say it was all in my mind, that I could trust him and that [her son] could trust him, that they were just having a good time and everything was innocent, there was nothing abnormal going on and nothing abnormal was going to happen."

She says her son's behaviour changed dramatically after the third visit to the bach. She did not know why at the time. Her son later told her he used to sleep on the couch in the lounge. On the night of the abuse Liddell had left a loaded slug gun next to the couch and came into the room in the dark.

"He tried to masturbate him and give him oral sex after he had fed him some alcohol. They'd been drinking all day. He actually seduced him when my son was in bed.

"My son was really scared. He sort of lay there frozen, pretended he was asleep because he thought if he tried to fight it and ran away, being isolated out there, that Peter might shoot him in the back."

Liddell whispered into her son's ear, "When you're ready [saying his name], when you're ready".

When Liddell dropped her son home a day early, the atmosphere between them was different. The chumminess was gone.

The boy's relationship with his mother also deteriorated and he began to mix with the wrong crowd and get into trouble. After a fight with his mother he left home.

He dropped out of school, lost a lot of weight and became rundown. Liddell was still in contact and offered him a room at his Manurewa house, saying he would not be there because he was staying at the beach. The boy moved in because he was desperate, says his mother. He had blocked out the abuse and it was better than living on the street.

She called the police again, asking them again if they knew anything about a Peter Little. This time they asked whether she meant Peter Liddell. They asked his address and then confirmed he was a paedophile.

This time the police acted. The boy was put in touch with social workers and police told the mother to keep him away from Liddell. Her son went to live with his aunt before moving back home.

At first, he was too embarrassed to lay a complaint but eventually he went to the police, telling them he did not want Liddell to do to anyone else what he had done to him.

In 1998, when Liddell was released into Waiuku under supervision, he featured in a documentary on TV3. He was well aware of the harm he had caused, saying: "You can't say sorry because it's not enough. I can't help them [his victims] because that would not be right. I don't know what to do about my victims."

His lawyer told the Weekend Herald it would be inappropriate for him to speak to us because he has an application pending for a crucial preventive detention hearing.

If Liddell gets preventive detention when sentenced in August it would mean he is jailed indefinitely, which Justice Minister Phil Goff has said is the only absolute guarantee a person will not reoffend.

However, Liddell was allowed out on bail until sentencing, to make arrangements for the care of his old mother. He is back living in the area with conditions which resemble house arrest.

In the documentary Liddell, described by many as charming and polite, indicated he had been abused as a child. He had persuaded himself that if it was okay for him to be abused, it would be okay for the young people he abused.

But his latest victim's mother says he is an accomplished liar and a "disgusting" conman.

He is intelligent and savvy. When the Herald flushed him out in June last year his skills as an ex-policeman were evident.

On learning he had slipped undetected into yet another community, Graham's Beach, and had been seen with children again, the Herald investigated and played cat and mouse in the streets of Manurewa. The ex-cop drove past with his mum in the car, semi-disguised in sunglasses and hat.

He was on to our reporter and photographer immediately, ducking into streets and evading any chance of a picture.

Contacted by telephone, Liddell was adamant he had not had any unsupervised contact with children. He just needed to get on with his life, he said. "I need history to be history. I have done my very best."

Friends of his in Manurewa approached by the Herald last year initially tried to defend him. Told he was a notorious paedophile, they gawped. They had thought he was the nicest guy you could wish to meet. Now they call him "slimy".

"I don't think I have ever been so shocked in my life," said one. "We just never would have picked it."

Now one husband and wife feel uneasy that they had gone for a beer at his house when the latest victim was present. "You could tell he'd been upset. I remarked to my wife as we came away, 'I don't like that kid there, something's not right there'."

He did not pick it as abuse but said he did get a little suspicious when Liddell took a little local Maori boy under his wing - "he took him out to the beach ... "