Defence wants to reassess sex attack risk reports
Consideration of preventive detention for a repeat sex attacker who was once a New Zealand representative wrestler has been delayed while the defence checks on assessments of the continuing risk he may pose.
The sentencing of 49-year-old Devon Charles Bond was meant to take place in the High Court at Christchurch today but Justice Gerald Nation granted a three-month adjournment at the defence request.
Before the court can consider an open-ended preventive detention sentence, it must have reports and risk assessments from two health assessors – usually a psychiatrist and a psychologist.
Those reports have been completed, but defence counsel Tony Greig asked for more time to have the reports considered by another psychiatrist or psychologist.
Justice Gendall said he would grant the adjournment to October 26, but said Mr Greig should give the court plenty of notice if he required evidence to be called at the hearing, or wished to cross-examine witnesses.
Mr Greig told the court the defence wanted to consider the health professionals’ assessments of the risk that Bond posed.
He has already served a jail term for abducting a woman jogger on May 30, 1995. He grabbed the woman and put her in the boot of his car, but she managed to release the boot lock and escape the moving car. He was sentenced on a charge of abducting her with the intention of having sexual intercourse.
In May, he admitted the 1994 kidnap and rape of a woman in Burwood, after a cold case DNA match.
The 42-year-old Burwood woman was alone at her home when Bond turned her mains power off in the garage.
When she was walking through the hallway, Bond came through the internal access door leading from the garage. He had a mask or balaclava covering his head and face, and held a knife.
He held the knife against the woman’s throat as he walked her into the bedroom, pushed her onto the bed and tied her hands with cord cut from the clothes line. He then sexually assaulted and raped her, took her handbag contents, pulled the telephone cord out, and left the house.
This attack took place before the abduction for which Bond was jailed in 1995.
Justice Nation noted that one of the report writers made positive comments about the influences on Bond since he was released from his prison sentence.
“It is really how these matters are weight up in the overall balance,” he said, but he would not rule out the preventive detention sentence the Crown has asked the court to consider.
Judge Nation said: “Both report writers agree there is a degree of risk. It is significant there are some differences but ultimately the court has to assess that risk in the light of that information, which comes back to what actually happened, and also takes into account the way that Mr Bond has lived in the community since his release from prison.”
Category: Focus
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