Sex attacker was considering murder, court told

An 11-year-old girl saved her own life by leaping from the moving car being driven by the 18-year-old man who had just raped and strangled her.

The Crown says it is clear the court would have been considering a murder sentencing if the girl had not saved herself from William James Stewart.

Crown prosecutor Sara Jamieson said Stewart had been viewing violent pornography involving children from an early age, and he had confirmed that at the time of the October 2013 incident “homicidal thoughts were running through his mind”.

The Crown was pressing for an open-ended preventive detention sentence for Stewart because of the assessment of the on-going risk he posed. Justice Cameron Mander jailed Stewart for 15 years with a non-parole term of eight years, but declined to impose the preventive detention term.

He told Stewart: “What you did, is a family’s worst nightmare.”

Name suppression on Stewart was also lifted today, 11 months after his arrest.

Stewart, now aged 19, had admitted raping a 17-year-old near Christchurch Airport on October 13, 2013, threatening to do grievous bodily harm, abducting a girl for sex, raping, and having unlawful sexual connection with an 11-year-old girl in rural North Canterbury a few hours later.

Two victim impact statements were read to the court at the start of the sentencing but their contents were all suppressed.

Crown prosecutor Sara Jamieson said the court needed to assess Stewart’s future risk, and whether it was a case where preventive detention should be imposed to hold him in custody until his risk was reduced.

Three psychologists had assessed him. Two of them put his risk of future offending as medium-to-high, and the third identified several risk factors. The Crown believed preventive detention was necessary because of the risk he posed to adult women, and girls.

“The sentence is about community protection from those who pose a significant and on-going risk to the safety of of its members,” she said. The reports cited concerns about the possibility that Stewart would react violently in some situations where he would “take back power and control” and would seek revenge.

Defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger said: “This was offending which could have ended in a significantly worse manner than it it did – and things are bad enough now.”

She said Stewart was a first offender who was barely 18 when he committed the offences. He had entered early guilty pleas in November and the case had then involved reports being prepared and considered.

He had had no treatment or intervention in the past, and he now had “some insight into the enormity of what he has done”, she said. In considering preventive detention, the court could not lose sight of his age. He was now highly motivated to undergo treatment.

She asked for final suppression because of the effects – including a possible community backlash – upon Stewart’s family if his name were published.

Justice Mander said both victims were strangled as part of the sex attacks. The psychological damage from the attacks had been “incalculable”.

“Your young victim, fearing for her life, courageously threw herself from the moving car in order to escape,” said the judge. “The courage and resilience of your younger victim is remarkable.”

Stewart crashed his car at high speed into a power pole soon afterwards, while he had a noose tied around in neck in an apparent suicide attempt.

Justice Mander said Stewart’s upbringing was unremarkable. He had a supportive family, but there had been depression and one suicide attempt and self-harming behaviour. There had been some recreational drug use, mainly cannabis.

He had abducted the 11-year-old girl “to act out some deviant fantasy that involved raping a young girl”. She had been subjected to multiple indignities.

He referred to Stewart’s deviant sexual preferences and his viewing of pornography involving children, coercive sex, rape, and strangulation. After he had decided to commit suicide, he had chosen to abduct and violate a child.

Declining preventive detention, he took note of Stewart’s age and his growing maturity. He had been seen as emotionally and behaviourally stable over the last six weeks. However, he described the offending as “deeply troubling”.

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