Jailed sex offender says wife died in Philippines flooding
Repeat sex offender David Stanley John Tranter says the Filipina woman he married while on the run overseas from the New Zealand authorities has now been killed in a flood.
Tranter (pictured) was today jailed indefinitely under a preventive detention order imposed by Justice David Gendall in the High Court at Christchurch on five child sexual abuse charges.
The convictions were the latest in a criminal history that stretched back 49 years, said Justice Gendall as he imposed the open-ended jail sentence that will keep 65-year-old Tranter in prison until he is seen as no longer imposing a threat.
Health assessors reports saw him as a moderate-to-high risk of further offending. One said that if he offended again it would most likely be against a child aged under 16, and most likely a girl – “Although he presents a risk to all children.”
Tranter had been found guilty at a jury trial last year of indecent assault on a boy aged under 12, sodomy on a boy, sexual connection with a girl aged under 16, inducing a boy under 12 to do an indecent act, and rape of a teenage girl.
Tranter continues to deny the offending and he has not completed his two efforts at rehabilitation through the Kia Marama programme for sex offenders at Christchurch Prison.
Justice Gendall said Tranter was now a widower since his Filipina wife had died in floods that occurred in the Philippines recently.
In August, Typhoon Goni killed at least nine people in the northern Philippines through flooding and landslides.
After serving one of his jail terms, Tranter absconded from his extended supervision order in 2007 and travelled to the Philippines where he married a woman.
He was eventually tracked down and arrested by the Philippines Bureau of Immigration when they found him in Davao City in 2009 and he could not produce his passport. He was deported to New Zealand in early 2010 to face charges of breaching his parole and extended supervision.
In online reports of his deportation, comments turned up from a woman named Dalia Ausan, who said she was his wife. She wrote: “I can’t believe for what I read. He’s become a nice person and husband to me. I can’t believe this.”
She said she came from a poor family and was then 23 years old. “I still love David,” she wrote among the online comments. “I hate person judge him so much.”
Defence counsel Lee Lee Heah urged Justice Gendall to stop short of imposing preventive detention, saying that the health assessors did not agree on the risk he posed. One of their reports was “tentative”. She said it was not fair that the victims blamed all their troubles on Tranter’s offending against them. Even a finite jail term would mean he was an old man when he would be released from prison.
But Crown prosecutor Deirdre Elsmore said the nature of Tranter’s offending meant he would continue to be a risk right into his old age. In spite of his convictions, he continued to deny having any sexual attraction to children at any time in his life, and continued to minimise his offending.
Justice Gendall said Tranter had 49 convictions stretching back 49 years including eight for sexual offending, eight for violence, and 17 for dishonesty.
The victim impact statements were troubling and concerning and “make chilling reading”, said the judge. His offending had had a devastating effect on the children, who were now adults.
He decided that a nine-year jail term, which he would have imposed, was not adequate to protect the community and its vulnerable children. Without treatment, Tranter posed a significant risk.
He said Tranter could not be considered for release until at least five years had passed.
Tranter defeated the judge’s order that he was allowed to be photographed in court by simply holding a large envelope in front of his face for a long period.
Category: Focus
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