Jail term for indecent acts

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 8

Jail term for indecent acts

A retired Sydney man whose holiday in New Zealand in December “went wrong” was jailed for six months when he appeared for sentence in the Christchurch District Court yesterday for four offences of doing indecent acts on two boys, aged 13 and 12. The defendant, Henry William John Pepper-Clay-ton, aged 66, also known as Henry John Pepper, was also sentenced to a concurrent term of three months imprisonment for an Immigration Act offence, of being unlawfully in New Zealand. The latter offence, to which he pleaded guilty yesterday, was committed by virtue of Pepper-Clayton’s having served a prison sentence of two years, imposed in Sydney in 1954, for indecent assault on a male. Tliis offence carries mandatory deportation, which will follow the defendant’s prison sentence. The defendant had pleaded guilty to the indecency charges at a previous Court appearance. The Court heard then that he had arrived in Christchurch for a holiday, with one boy in his care, and the other boy had been invited to accompany them.

The offences were committed ori each boy in Christchurch, and two days later at Stewart Island.

Defence counsel, Mr K. J. Grave, said yesterday, in mitigation of penalty, that the two boys had behavi-

oural problems, although he did not blame them in any way. /* Pepper-Clayton had come to New Zealand essentially for a holiday, and it became a bit trying for him, especially when the second boy accompanied them and he found them “quite a handful.” He denied the suggestion in the police summary that he had engineered the trip to commit the offences. It was essentially a holiday for him — a holiday that went wrong. Mr Grave said the defendant had led an active political life, including 30 years as a member of a civil liberties group. . V He had had a difficult home background, leaving home at 13 in the Depression years. He was an invalid beneficiary, receiving most of his income from a war pension, and had health nroblems. Mr Grave said a sentence of periodic detention would involve his remaining in New Zealand for a longer period to serve this penalty. Therefore he submitted, with some reluctance, that a short prison sentence would be the appropriate penalty. Judge N. G. Hattaway said he saw a short prison sentence as the only appropriate penalty. He said in imposing the sentences that it appeared from the police summary that the boys resisted further offences which the defendant proposed to them.