Crown may seek preventive detention for child sex offender
File image. © Andrew Bardwell
The Crown will consider seeking preventive detention for 62-year-old David Stanley John Tranter after his third round of convictions for sex offences on children.
The jury deliberated for half a day in the High Court at Christchurch before returning its verdicts convicting Tranter on six charges.
The jury found him not guilty of wounding a boy with reckless disregard for his safety by cutting him on the hand with a knife.
It convicted him of sodomising the boy, inducing him to do an indecent act, and indecently assaulting him, as well as two charges of raping and sexually violating a girl.
It was historic offending at various South Island locations, and involved two complainants who had approached the police separately as adults.
Defence counsel Tony Greig said Tranter denied the allegations, and asked the jury to listen to the witnesses’ evidence as it was hard for anyone to disprove or put forward something positive about something that he didn’t do 25 years ago.
Crown prosecutor Deirdre Elsmore told the jury that Tranter had already been convicted for indecently assaulting two girls in 2002, which she said was relevant because it showed he had a sexual interest in children.
The jury was not told about later offending. Tranter served a four-year sentence for a sexual assault on a 16-year-old girl on a Christchurch street in 2003.
After his release from prison, Tranter was placed on a seven-year extended supervision order which allowed him to be closely monitored. He fled New Zealand for the Philippines in 2007 but was brought back to New Zealand and jailed in May 2012 for three years on six charges, including using a false passport, breaching prison release conditions, and failing to comply with his seven-year ESO.
After the verdicts were delivered today, Mrs Elsmore told trial judge Justice Christian Whata: “I need to look at the question of preventive detention. It is something the Crown will be considering.”
She said the Crown would send the court a memorandum about its decision, and Justice Whata said that if the open-ended jail sentence was sought he would then make the necessary orders.
Reports from two health assessors are required to consider the future risk posed by the offender before preventive detention can be imposed.
Justice Whata set the sentencing for February 5 and remanded Tranter in custody. He called for a pre-sentence report and victim impact statements from the two complainants who gave evidence at the trial.
Tranter remained impassive as the guilty verdicts were announced by the foreman.
Category: News
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