Child sex offender Neil Robert Wallace has been sentenced in the Nelson District Court to five years and three months in prison for his offending against two young victims.
WARNING: This story deals with child sex offending and may be upsetting to some readers.
The victim’s voice rang out across the courtroom like a ship’s bell through a quiet fog: “Our lives are full of choices – right or wrong, stay or leave, love or destroy.”
Convicted child sex offender Neil Robert Wallace hung his head as the words hit like shrapnel.
“You chose to cross every boundary of decency, love, and law. You made those choices, and now you must face the consequences,” the victim said via a remote link to the courtroom.
Wallace couldn’t see, but only hear the victim.
The 55-year-old, described as “the predator who hid in plain sight”, is now in prison and a registered child sex offender for the indecencies to which he subjected two children.
One was young enough that they still sucked their thumb.
The other was lured with lollies and money. Once, the victim was filmed naked in exchange for a unicorn toy.
Wallace was sentenced in the Nelson District Court this week to five years and three months in prison on eight charges of indecently assaulting a child aged under 12, five charges of doing an indecent act on a child under 12, two charges of unlawful sexual connection and a charge of making an objectionable publication.
The justice sought by the first victim, who described a childhood marked by years that felt like “walking on broken glass”, might not have come to fruition if not for the parent of the second victim coming forward.
The parent said in their victim impact statement, read on their behalf by Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber, that they “hated” Wallace for making them question the years they had known him.
The parent described Wallace as “vile” and as insignificant as a “tiny grain of sand in a vast ocean”.
“I will forget you, but never forgive the smallest man who ever lived,” they said.
Wallace was arrested after police searched his home in the Tasman area in January 2025.
The first victim, now in their late 20s, had gone to the police two years earlier, prompted by a cathartic response to the sudden death of a close family member.
“All of this trauma, all of this grief came out and I decided to go to the police,” the victim told NZME.
Until then, the victim had been unable to fathom that what had happened was desperately wrong.
“When I first told somebody and their reaction was so extreme, that made me realise that my childhood wasn’t like everyone else’s, like this was so normalised that I thought that everyone was experiencing this.”
The police explained the challenges inherent in such historical offending, and the difficulties in proving the allegations.
“So I decided to withdraw my statement, but they did tell me that because I did my interview – my video interview, that they had to notify him that someone raised a complaint.”
Two years later, police got back in touch to say someone else had come forward, and the case was reopened.
The victim was devastated to learn someone else had been harmed, but also felt empowered.
“I was very, very determined in thinking, ‘okay, I’ve got him this time’, because I never thought that justice would be served.”
This week, the victim finally confronted Wallace, and delivered the story they had long wanted others to hear.
Wallace committed his crimes at empty campgrounds and quiet roadsides.
“It was calculated, and it was deliberate,” the victim told the court.
The abuse didn’t stop when the physical acts ended, but has followed them into their adult life – in the nightmares they still wake from, the flashbacks that play on loop, and in the anxiety that grips when they are alone.
“It’s in the fear of the dark that grabs at me, and in the shame that I carry that was never mine to bear.”
The victim also described feeling that their life had no value.
“It has taken me years of pain, therapy and rebuilding to understand that none of this was my fault. It is yours,” the victim told Wallace as he bowed his head in the dock.
The victim told NZME that despite everything, they had scraped through, and now had a good job and relative stability.
“I grew up poor, so I didn’t really have the opportunity to go to university. I went from job to job to job and managed to elevate my skills. I think that’s how I’ve got where I am.”
At sentencing, defence lawyer Emma Riddell described Wallace’s “significant cannabis addiction”, which formed a link between his disinhibition and the offending.
She accepted that it was not the only reason, but said Wallace’s desire for treatment was positive, and a sign of genuine remorse.
Judge Jo Rielly said Wallace’s cannabis use might have numbed his thoughts and lowered his inhibitions, but his consumption of alcohol and cannabis did not justify or mitigate his offending.
One alcohol and drug clinician described Wallace as having limited insight into his offending. A psychiatrist said it was “absent” with respect to one victim, and distorted in the other.
Wallace told one report writer he had “only pleaded guilty for pragmatic reasons,” and that he denied he had ever offended against one of the victims.
Judge Rielly acknowledged Wallace’s brief apology letters, which neither victim wanted to see.
She said they could be seen as expressions of remorse, but it was difficult to reconcile the contents of one letter with what Wallace had said in the report.
It was more likely linked to efforts to improve his position at sentencing as opposed to a genuine expression based on true insight, sorrow, regret and the harm caused.
“While you regret your offending behaviour, and have expressed a desire for rehabilitation, I do not consider remorse warrants any credit,” Judge Rielly said in calculating sentencing discounts.
Wallace received a 25% credit for his guilty pleas, which spared the victims, and the court, the need for a trial.
Judge Rielly acknowledged Wallace had been moved by what he heard in court, but that, sadly, the effect on each victim was the same as for so many others the courts saw.
“I hope, being at an early stage of your journey through rehabilitation, you have listened carefully to the effects on each.”
The victim told NZME that although it was terrifying to speak up, it was essential people did.
“It’s the hardest thing you could ever do, but I think it’s so important to just keep on talking about this.
“If one person doesn’t listen, tell somebody else.”
The victim said that if telling the police was too big a hurdle, there were other support organisations offering assistance.
The victim said they would never understand how a man could do what Wallace did.
Witnessing him in the dock being sentenced was the last occasion they would see him, or speak his name.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.