'Perfect neighbour' a paedophile
Sunday Star Times
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A mother is outraged that she wasn't warned about her "perfect neighbour" - a convicted paedophile who, for three years, was sexually abusing her two young daughters.
"The thing about all of this is that it could have been prevented," the Northland mother says. "This man is a known paedophile. He has a history. He has been in prison for similar offences on children. Yet no one told us."
Corrections says that before a legislation change in 2004 it was allowed to inform neighbours only when a child sex-offender was deemed "an imminent risk".
It seems this did not apply to Kevin Bernard Kain, 64, who had previously used a child as a "sex toy", when he moved next door to his victims in 2002. In January this year he was caught indecently touching his neighbour's five-year-old daughter. The mechanic lured the girl into his shed by offering her lollies but was caught in the act by his partner.
The partner immediately told the girl's parents and police, and Kain was arrested two days later.
He pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting the five-year-old and her older sister (now seven) over three years and is in custody awaiting sentence. In 1997, Kain was convicted on four charges each of attempted rape, indecent assault and sexual violation of a girl under 12. That abuse is understood to have lasted three years in the early 90s the judge said Kain treated that victim as a "sex toy". His nine-year sentence was cut to six-and-a-half years by the Court of Appeal (partly due to Kain's guilty plea), and he served only two-thirds of that.
Released in December 2001, it is understood Kain lived in a boarding house until moving to a rural area with his partner in mid-2002, away from schools but next door to the family with young children.
The mother says Kain won their trust by fixing the family's vehicles, taking them fishing in his boat and turning up to all the neighbourhood parties. They invited their "normal, friendly neighbour" over on Christmas Day and when they were away, he fed their pets. The children would often play at his house, when his partner's granddaughter was visiting. After about three years, Kain started touching the children.
The mother says the girls were so young they didn't even realise what was happening, or that it was wrong. And Kain made the most of this.
"Kevin was very clever at separating the kids... giving them ice-cream and drinks and then taking one of them into a bedroom."
Over the years he became bold enough to abuse the girls in the garden while their mother watched from the house.
"This happened when he came to help mow our lawn. He would give the kids rides with them sitting on his knee. It really gets to me the number of times I have stood on our deck or looked out the window and thought `Aren't our kids having fun!"' The mother says abusing her daughters in her presence made the girls think it was normal, and OK. She had the "good touching/bad touching" talk every few months, asking the girls directly if they had been touched, and they always said no.
The mother gave this story her blessing, saying going public was difficult, "but if in doing so we can save more children from being abused and more families from going through this grief and sadness it will all be worthwhile".
"We are keen for parents to know just how easily this can happen to our kids. There are many more `Kevins' out there living in the community."
Whangarei CIB detective sergeant Andrew Clubley could not comment on whether the family should have been informed of the danger, but once an offender's probation period ended "there's no controls over them".
Peter Jenkins, Sensible Sentencing's spokesman on sex offenders, says paedophiles should be isolated from society. Failing that, their community should be informed.
"That's the best defence to tell everyone. Particularly those with young children," he said.
Corrections said it had had no contact with Kain since January 2004. Although he was released in 2001, his sentence officially ended in mid-2003 and he was monitored for six months after that.
Corrections said the 2004 legislation change meant officials could now talk to neighbours when offenders changed addresses. Its website says Corrections is also meant to check whether neighbours have children, before allowing a child sex offender to move house.
Corrections said police were advised about a child sex offender's address before they left jail, and any changes in address during the sentence and monitoring period. The suitability of an offender's address was assessed, and for a child sex offender that included proximity to schools and parks, who lived at the address, and the offender's access to support services.
STORY SO FAR
Corrections has repeatedly refused to identify where freed sex offenders are living, citing privacy concerns.
More than 100 high-risk paedophiles released from jail are on an extended supervision scheme, but about a third have reoffended.
Offenders on the scheme include notorious child-rapist Lloyd McIntosh and Wellington man William Tyler-Galerne.
Some people have formed vigilante groups and organised pamphlet drops when they've become aware of paedophiles being paroled to their area.
Last year Child Youth and Family paid a Napier mum to relocate after released paedophile Mataroa Barton, 18, stalked her five-year-old.
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i think we should give them a choice. voluntary castration, or a bullet. when one person WILL cause SO much pain, they really fall outside of the tolerable bracket. even the perpetrators will admit that they are dangerous, so we should give them the option to do the right thing, and remove their impetous to offend, remove their twisted sexuality and give themselves and the rest of us peace of mind, or we should remove them permanently from our society.
I agree with others, there should be a public sex offender (and violent offender) database set up. People need to opportunity to protect themselves. For all we know our children are walking right past these offenders each day - statistics show there is a significant chance that one day a crime will be committed.
There are many of examples (and some yet to come) of reoffending that could have been avoided if the victim had known the offenders history.
I would really like to know each political party's position on a public sex offender database. I would also like to see a poll run to see New Zealander's view on the topic.
What if the person has been wrongfully accused and convicted. This has happened to a teacher that I know. The little girl lied, because she was told off for not doing her homework. This came out after the conviction, when her guilty conscience got the better of her. If we subscribed to Chris Allan's philosophy we aren't much more than animals.
Don't get me wrong, I have two small children, and the thought of this happening to them, turns my stomach.
I do think that the public has a right to know, but how do we allow that person to become a functioning member of society - in the case that they have been cured of thier sickness?
It's not simple...it's one of the hardest debates out there.
Paedophiles destroy lives. They deserve a bullet in the head.
It is incredible how uninformed society is about the true risk that child sex offenders pose in our community and the ineffectiveness of forms of control such as sex offender databases. I have conducted extensive research into this subject which is both balanced and uneffected by the type of moral panic evident in the previous posts. For those of you who are interested the full dissertation can be found online (Controlling Child Sex Offenders: A Touchy Subject, Shaun Maloney, University of Otago, 2006).
low life gutless piece of **** maggots like this should have no rights at all - lock them up - if u have to release them then tattoo PEDOPHILE on their foreheads and plaster all their details on websites, registers etc
anyone defending these maggots "rights" need to be treated the same way as them
they lost all their rights to "human rights" when they offended - this was their choice!
The justice system in this country is rubbish. I know a girl with a newborn baby who lives at home with her mother and her CONVICTED PEDOPHILE brother. I rang CYPS and they said they couldn't do anything about it. They go out and leave the baby girl at home with the brother. He was caught doing explicit things to someone elses baby, and because he was 15 he got home detention. As soon as the girl had teh baby she should have had to leave the house, or the brother should have had to leave. What's wrong with this country when people let pedophiles in their own family be around children? What's wrong with CYPS and the police? Its an outrage! I bet she'll be raped for about 15 years and everyone will ask what happened, and then I can say I tried and nobody listened. Whatever happened to better safe than sorry?
I think this is disgusting. We all think of our home as a safe place, yet things like this can happen?
It's very brave of this Mother to come forward and to tell her story - from personal experience, I understand the difficulty here.
Paedophilia is becoming more and more threatening in New Zealand, yet we don't have anything set in place to stop it from happening - AND hey - if they plead guilty, they'll get a shorter sentence; how fantastic for them!..
If a paedophile - or any threatening criminal for that matter, is being released from prison, neighbours of their new address should be notified, no matter WHAT the circumstances.
I was abused by a neighbour when i was eleven, he took my childhood away,i went from being a happy child with lots of friends and hobbies, to being a loner with no interests at all, i felt like i was in a dark,black hole & couldnt reach the surface. He was finally moved from our neighbourhood, but it was to late for me the damage had been done! I wish my parents had been warned of this predator,i had a happy childhood until he came to live next door.
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Innocent childen need the most protection.
People like Kevin Kain should not be protected by the law. Our government has a duty to protect the public from these sorts of scum and should at the very least make us aware that these people are in our community. It is a hard fact that these people have and always will continue to exist in our world and for every one of these cases I am sure there are another 10 that go unreported.
My opinion is that the easiest and most cost effective way of releasing these predators short of putting a bullet in them is to tattoo there foreheads with the words "PAEDOPILE". That way any law abiding citizen can plainly see and take the appropiate action to protect themselves and their families. What could possibly worse than a life sentence of public humiliation and scrutiny.
Its time that NZ gets tough on all criminal behaviour instead of overcrowding prisons and releasing these scum out early and unmanaged.