ABUSED POSITION OF TRUST

NZ Truth, Issue 1229, 20 June 1929, Page 1

ABUSED POSITION OF TRUST

. $ ' . ".-.■.' ■:■*• ... y ■ ' Youthful Bank Official YWds To Strong Temptation "IMPOSSIBLE TO GRANT PROBATION"

I 7 . "■ . : — i ■..''■' (From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Wellington Representative). It seems incredible that young men engaged m positions of trust, such as a bank, can imagine that their defalcations -will forever be overlooked, but this seems to be the general idea, yet one nevertheless that John Langlois Maxwell Lefroy, will never hold again. '-'■<,-■ ■ " '-.

AS a teller m a bank, Lefroy helped himself, to a total of £130/10/-, and for, that he will spend the next two years m a Borstal institution with reformative treatment. As a- child of three years Lefroy was sent out . to New Zealand from India, where he lived with his parents, because of his health, and for practically the whole of his life from then on he was on his own. 7 When he was 11 years old his mother came to New Zealand. for a few years, but she later returned. >. to Burma where her husband and the boy's father was a mining engineer. '. Before she left the country she obtained for her son a position- in a. bank at Pahiatiia.and she left him, confident tliat he was going to make good. ; Lefroy, now 21.. years of "age,, found himself assailed by temptation, and he stole two sums of £60 and ; : £ 70/11)/-, by extracting credit slips for those amounts. When Lefroy was interviewed by the inspector at Wellington he admitted his offences. ■- While' admitting that the offences involved money taken while holding a position of trust, Mr. W. E. Leicester, made a strenuous plea for leniency, and probation. Counsel outlined the life of Lefroy, and suggested that the fact that he did not have his parents to guide him, and that he had no friends m New Zealand was the reason for his succumbing to temptation.

His Honor regretted that he could not grant probation m the present case, and mentioned that. Lefroy. was only one df seven young men he had before him that day, all of, whom were concerned m offences which involved dishonesty... „'■'..;'.'• It was impossible tp grant probation under the circumstances, and Lefroy would go to. a Borstal institution for two years for reformative detention.