February 01, 2008

Outward Bound course features in burglary sentence

A judge is hoping there will be money to send a North Canterbury man convicted of burglary on an Outward Bound course.

He said the confidence building course would challenge 28-year-old Matthew Raymond Peneha who has 57 previous convictions.

?It seems funding may well become available from a charitable organisation run by people who want to see others like yourself benefit from such programmes,? said Christchurch District Court Judge David Saunders.

?I hope if you are given that opportunity you will take it, and embrace it, and prove that you are better than your record suggests.?

Peneha has 57 convictions for offending in the Gisborne area including dishonesty, nuisance offending, and stand-over tactics in line with his gang role there.

Peneha stood in the dock for sentencing with his 22-year-old?brother, Joseph Laurie Peneha, a labourer at a North Canterbury township development.

They had been convicted of burglary after a defended hearing at the Rangiora District Court. Two others involved ? one of them a youth offender ? had already pleaded guilty and had given evidence at the hearing.

?The youth offender impressed me as somebody who was telling the truth,? said Judge Saunders. ?No doubt he must have felt a good deal of pressure that day, in giving evidence in your presence.?

The four had carried out a house burglary in Rangiora in which $1930 worth of a woman?s property was taken.

Defence counsel for the brothers, Andrew McCormick, said Joseph Peneha had much fewer convictions than his brother and seemed to have acted out of bravado.

He had a clearly troubled background, having been in a succession of Child, Youth, and Family homes ?because of his robust childhood behaviour?.

He was already doing community work and paying off fines at $40 a week. Because of that, and his hire-purchase commitments he had been unable to save any money to pay a lump sum as reparation to the woman who was burgled.

Matthew Peneha had also had an unpleasant childhood with his father in Gisborne, while the mother and the younger children came to Christchurch. The father had gang associations, and his actions towards the son ? thrashings and beatings ? typified gang behaviour.

Matthew Peneha was left with social phobias and unable to react to people properly.

?He says he sees his father coming out in him when he is dealing with his own family members, and when he is reminded of that by others, it frightens him.?

He was unemployed because poor literacy and numeracy skills hindered him.

The judge noted Matthew Peneha had head injuries as a result of his involvement in gang violence in Gisborne. He had come south to try to make a new life.

He released Matthew Peneha under intensive supervision for 18 months with special conditions that he attend Outward Bound if possible, attend literacy and numeracy programmes as directed, as well as other counselling.

He sentenced Joseph Peneha to 125 hours of community work, and authorised the probation service to transfer some of that to training.

He ordered each brother to pay $482 as their share of the reparations.