Editorial: Now we're rid of an evil man

Aaron Ellmers is a depraved individual.

He preys on the innocent and the vulnerable, but thankfully he won't be able to harm anyone else.

The 41-year-old Hastings man was sentenced at High Court in Napier yesterday to a minimum term of imprisonment of 20 years for a number of child sex offences.

Ellmers admitted the charges in February after being caught as part of an international paedophile ring that was smashed by police last year.

Police say this is one of the worst cases they have ever seen.

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Greig of the Eastern Child Protection Team, said Ellmers was a very cunning and manipulative paedophile who had no regard for his victims or their families.

That is what makes this case so shocking - the way this sick man planned and plotted ways to steal children from their parents so that he could abuse them and then trade images of his crimes around the world with equally sick individuals.

This man knew no limits and he was even able to find a father willing to rent out his 13-month-old son for Ellmers' perverse use for $500.

That is unbelievable to most of us, but thank goodness the father was also arrested.

A further frightening aspect of this case was that Ellmers had previously been convicted in Australia of raping an 8-year-old boy and was deported in 2008 after 18 months in prison.

He later told detectives that the prison sex offenders' course he was forced to undergo gave him new ways in which to coerce children.

It does make one wonder why time is wasted even trying to rehabilitate someone like Ellmers.

He is an evil man and now he will have a long time to reflect on what he has done.

Society is well rid of him.