Cook Given 12 Years For Offences Against Child

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30365, 14 February 1964, Page 12

Cook Given 12 Years For Offences Against Child

(New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, February 13. Sentences totalling 12 years were imposed by Mr Justice Woodhouse in the Supreme Court at Hamilton today on William Desmond Bovey, aged 43, a cook, at Auckland, for offences arising out of the abduction of a child of 11 years at Coroglen, Whitianga. on October 25 last. Bovey was found guilty last week of abducting the child, threatening to kill her, attempted rape, indecent assault and assault on a female.

Mr J. D. Bathgate, for Bovey, asked for a sentence of preventive detention and said Bovey did not appreciate the enormity of his offences. Although there was no question of insanity there seemed to be evidence of mental abnormality and confusion in his actions.

His Honour said Bovey had snatched the girl off the road beside her home. He bound her with a thong and threatened to kill her if she continued to resist or attempted to attract attention.

The girl was taken for miles through the night and was made so terrified that even when help was to hand she kept silent. His Honour said at daybreak Bovey forced the girl to remove her clothes, shackled her arms behind her back, and then gave her an injection. A very determined effort was then made to complete the act of rape upon her. Bovey had made the mon-

strous suggestion that she was to be sent overseas for money. Whatever air of fantasy might seem to surround that explanation, the jury had no hesitation in accepting it as the best factual evidence of Bovey’s own mind and what he intended to do, practical or otherwise. His Honour said that for nearly 20 years Bovey had steadily built up a long list of convictions for dishonesty and had capped that iii 1957 with a disgraceful crime almost identical with the present one. He had abducted a girl of nine, bound her, taken her away in a car and seduced her. For this crime a sentence of preventive detention had been imposed.

Bovey had been released on parole for only six months' when he committed the offences before the Court. ' His Honour described i Bovey as a "thorough-going i menace.’.’ • He sentenced Borey to 10 years’ imprisonment on the 1 abduction charge, on the * threat to kill to four years, and assault to two years. The . last two sentences would be concurrent but two years would be cumulative on the sentence of 10 years. On the charge of attempted rape, Bovey was sentenced to eight years, and for indecent ■ assault with the syringe four ■ years. Both these terms would be cumulative but concurrent with the 12-year term.