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Sexual violation and indecent acts against a nine year old Whangarei boy in October and November 2000
15 previous convictions for similar offending
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.
none known
Born 1960
Prison
Sentenced to preventive detention with a 10 year minimum non-parole period in September 2001
Background
From the Evening Standard 19th September 2001
A paedophile who walked into Palmerston North police station and told police what he had done is to serve preventive detention. That means he must serve at least 10 years, and can be released only if the risk of his reoffending is diminished.
Anthony Carlton Taylor, 41, beneficiary, Palmerston North, was sentenced yesterday by Justice Goddard in the High Court at Palmerston North. His lawyer Fergus Steedman said that, on July 12, Taylor went to the police and asked if there were any complaints registered against him. After a formal interview and inquiries, he was charged with five offences against a nine-year-old boy. The offences occurred in Whangarei in October and November last year.
Taylor entered early guilty pleas to a charge of sexual violation, three charges of committing an indecent act, and one of inducing the boy to commit an indecent act. While on remand in prison, Mr Steedman said, Taylor was badly beaten.
He said Taylor readily acknowledged that, without help, he could not stop offending, and that he was a risk to the community. It was because of this that he went to the police. He had served previous sentences for child sex offending. Taylor's expressed preference for the future was that he live "in a sheltered place and talk to other men like me, and get treatment from a psychologist", Mr Steedman said.
Taylor had great remorse for how he had let down his latest young victim, and in recent months had been thinking deeply about "all his victims from all his life - victims he acknowledges he has sometimes hurt and hurt quite badly". Crown prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk called Taylor "almost the classic case contemplated by preventive detention provisions". He met the criteria, primarily because of the high future risk he presented.
Justice Goddard said Taylor had learnt deviant sexual behaviour at an early age from his father, and had 15 previous convictions. There was, she said, "huge damage" to the young victim, affecting his social and emotional relationships, his schooling and his general mental health. Imposing preventive detention, Justice Goddard also ordered a criminal DNA databank sample.
The Department of Corrections prison census for July this year shows 136 people serving preventive detention sentences. In the early to mid-1980s the sentence was rarely applied - once a year, if at all. From the late 80s, its use was increased, and by the mid-90s courts were sentencing 12 or 13 people a year to preventive detention. This led to a Court of Appeal review of the sentence's application in October-November 1997, based on what is now quoted as the benchmark decision - the Queen vs Leith .