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escalating violence in our community
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Indecent assault and assault with a weapon in Dunedin in October 2009
Rape of a disabled Christchurch woman in December 2001
Previous convictions for violent and sexual offending in mid-1980s, 1993 and 2000
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Allan McCreath (twin brother)
none known
Born 1970
Prison
Sentenced to 5 years 6 months in January 2002
Sentenced to preventive detention with a 5 year minimum non-parole period in April 2010
Background
Christchurch Press story, February 1, 2002
A convicted sex offender has been warned he risks spending the rest of his life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the rape of a vulnerable disabled woman. Michael Thomas McCreath, 31, unemployed, had gone to the partially paralysed woman's house on December 18 last year and was invited in to watch a video with her but then demanded that she have sex with him, the High Court in Christchurch was told.
McCreath's latest offending qualified him for a potential sentence of preventive detention - an indefinite jail term of at least 10 years for the worst offenders - because he has three previous court appearances on sex and violence charges, involving a young girl in the mid-1980s and adult women in 1993 and 2000. Justice Chisholm said he had decided the latest rape did not justify a sentence of preventive detention but any further sexual offending almost certainly would.
"Next time you're before the court, you just won't come out. Your choice," he said. Prosecutor Jane Farish said the woman was partially paralysed on one side after a stroke and it would have been obvious to McCreath. She had only recently begun to live alone again after years of requiring 24-hour care, and the "horrible" rape caused her condition to regress. Liz Bulger, defending, said McCreath had believed the woman had been flirting with him during a chance meeting earlier in the day and was unaware that she had significant disabilities.
Justice Chisholm said a dispute over whether the woman had told him to stop once, as McCreath claimed, or throughout the incident, as she maintained, was of little consequence. "That doesn't matter too much. It was clear enough to you that she said no and that's all a woman ever has to say. That's the end of the matter," he said. The judge gave McCreath credit for his early plea of guilty, which saved his victim from the added trauma of having to give evidence in court, and imposed a "relatively lenient" sentence of five and a half years jail.