Crown seeks preventive detention for life parolee

Record includes murder and prior sex offence

The crown is seeking preventive detention for a sex offender who has already served a life sentence for murdering his wife.

Anthony Weke Tuimata was known as Anthony Weke in 1999 when he received a final warning from Justice Willie Young in the High Court in Christchurch that any further sexual offending could result in an open-ended jail sentence.

On that occasion he had admitted breaking into a 17-year-old woman’s sleep-out, and attempting to sexually violate her. He was jailed for six years.

He was sentenced to life in prison in Wellington in 1988 for the murder of his wife, and served just over 10 years in prison. He remains a life parolee.

Now the 53-year-old has pleaded guilty to a charge of doing an indecent act with a young person – an under-age girl – and had been remanded for sentence by Judge Colin Doherty in the Christchurch District Court today.

When the pleaded guilty, the crown withdrew a further charge of attempted sexual connection with a young person.

But crown prosecutor Tim Mackenzie filed an application for preventive detention to be considered. He said there was certainly a case for the sentence to be considered and for the necessary reports by two health assessors to be prepared.

He said Tuimata’s pre-sentence report disclosed a serious aggravating factor that there would have been possible communication of a disease if the sex offence had been completed. The court was not told what the disease was.

There was also a report that Tuimata was assessed as a high risk of reoffending.

Defence counsel Richard Peters said he was concerned that because Tuimata was already a life parolee, he wondered what preventive detention would “add to the mix”.

Judge Doherty said it was a case where preventive detention ought to be considered, and declined jurisdiction.

Tuimata was further remanded in custody for sentence in the High Court on October 7. By then, reports usually by a psychologist and psychiatrist will have been completed.