Political wrangling over paedophile

CANBERRA - Dennis Ferguson, on the run from vigilantes or under siege by them for much of the past six years, has once again barricaded himself against public outrage.

As the 62-year-old paedophile yesterday refused to budge from his Sydney public housing unit, senior New South Wales officials were meeting to find a way out for their equally besieged Government.

Ferguson has become the focus of a continuing national debate over the sentencing of paedophiles and their treatment and housing after release.

He was run out of Queensland and hidden in NSW, the state that virtually set the national paedophile agenda with the appalling revelations of organised and institutional child abuse in the 1990s Wood royal commission into police corruption.

Now Ferguson's unit has been surrounded by protesters, an unexploded petrol bomb was found on his doorstep, police have been called in to protect him, and the Government is trying to find a way out.

Ferguson came to national attention in 1987, when he was convicted with an accomplice of kidnapping three young children and committing acts including sodomy, gross indecency, indecent dealing and carnal knowledge.

He spent 14 years in a Queensland jail and on his release was ordered to report to police weekly.

He was able to use a loophole to escape a provision that could have seen him jailed indefinitely on the advice of two psychiatrists - and in NSW is not subject to more recent state laws that place stringent conditions on sex offenders.

Ferguson has never undergone rehabilitation and has never admitted or shown remorse for his crimes.

But life since his release in 2003 has been anything but easy.

Only months after he walked out of jail Ferguson was back inside, sentenced to 15 months for failing to inform police of a job selling cleaning products which could have given him access to children.

Two years later, furious residents forced him out of homes in Murgon and Ipswich in Queensland.

Ferguson placed himself briefly in voluntary police custody after death threats, attacks on his house and loud protests, and moved quietly to Miles, a country town northwest of Toowoomba.

Protests again erupted and intensified when Ferguson was charged with the indecent assault of a 5-year-old girl, a charge later dismissed after the judge found problems with the victim's evidence and believed that intense media coverage would deny Ferguson a fair trial.

Ferguson was once again run out of town and, later, out of the southern Brisbane suburb of Carbrook.

Now it is the turn of the Sydney suburb of Ryde, where Ferguson appeared two weeks ago after help in finding a new home from the prisoner support group Justice Action.

He has also been selling goods, including toys, for Diabetes Australia.

At first the NSW Government promised to turn Ferguson out of his unit but later found it had no legal grounds to force a move.

"To put a paedophile in the middle of an area surrounded by young families and schools [is like] trying to put a reformed alcoholic up in a pub," Housing Minister David Borger said.

Ferguson has denied being a threat, telling ABC radio in a phone interview yesterday that nearby families should not be afraid and that he was not interested in touching children.

If he was forced to move, he said, he would seek substantial compensation.

Justice Action spokesman Brett Collins said the Government had to face up to the fact that Ferguson was a rehabilitated man and was entitled to a home.

"They'd prefer that he was dead, but the truth of the matter is Dennis Ferguson is the same as anybody else - entitled to have public housing," he told the ABC.

But child protection groups have urged even tougher sentencing laws - such as a two-strike rule invoking indefinite detention for a second offence - and the state opposition has demanded new laws to allow Ferguson's eviction.

Premier Nathan Rees has established a special meeting to decide how to deal with the issue.