Boy for sentence on rapes

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 4

Boy for sentence on rapes

A 15-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to a series of offences after he escaped from Addington Prison in February was committed to the High Court for sentence after he appeared before Messrs R. M. Naysmith and D. F. Prestney, Justices of the Peace, in the Children and Young Persons’ Court yesterday. The boy, represented by Mr S. G. Barker, had escaped from Addington Prison on February 10. While free he admitted raping two girls, aged 16 and 17; attempting to rape a 30-year-old married woman, assaulting, wounding and threatening to kill the woman’s husband, and robbing the proprietor of a hamburger bar. Detective Sergeant B. M. Roswell told the Court that the two girls and the woman had required medical attention for shock and bleeding. The attempted rape of the married woman, made at knife point, occurred after the boy had broken into the woman’s house.

During the robbery of the Sydenham hamburger bar an assistant had been hit with a jagged garden stake. The husband of the woman on whom the rape attempt was made was stabbed by the boy and he, too, required medical attention.

The boy’s offences were described by Sergeant Roswell as some of the worst of their type to be committed in Christchurch for some time.

He said that the boy had shown no remorse when arrested.