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A New Zealander who made legal history when convicted in Great Britain of child sex offences committed in Southeast Asia has returned home, but discovered he cannot escape his past.
Heavy vehicle driver Peter Swale returned to New Zealand last year after serving a jail term in Great Britain for abusing an 11-year-old boy and taking 584 indecent photographs of children in hotel rooms during trips to Cambodia and the Philippines from 2001 to 2004.
He was caught downloading other indecent images at an internet cafe in Ipswich, in Suffolk, England.
A total of 3865 were found by police on his home computer in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
Swale, then 49, was jailed in 2005 for three years and nine months by Ipswich Crown court. He was also banned from working with children for life.
At the time, prosecutor Robert Sadd said: "It's believed to be the first time offences committed in the Philippines and Cambodia have been tried in the United Kingdom."
Since his release, Swale has spent time in Australia.
More recently, he has been living in his former hometown of Dunedin, where he rejoined the town's Pitlane Slot Car Club and featured on its website being welcomed back.
A concerned Australian, who followed Swale's movements, emailed the club to alert members last week.
Club spokesman Graeme Mitchell told the Herald Swale was a member of the club during the 1990s, and while some unusual photographs he kept on his computer had created suspicions, his criminal convictions were a shock.
Swale mostly came across as "just a typical bloke".
Mr Mitchell was thankful the club no longer had young members who might have been exposed to Swale.
After members of the club began exchanging emails on Swale's past, he got wind of it and in an email said he wouldn't return to the club.
"Obviously he volunteered without any prompting from us," Mr Mitchell said.
Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis of Dunedin said he was not aware of any specific alerts in relation to Swale. International criminal databases "don't talk to each other", he said.
A legal ethics expert warned this week against naming and shaming child sex offenders.
"If we victimise one person and create them as outcasts, we aren't addressing the risk," Christchurch crown prosecutor Kathryn Dalziel told a privacy issues forum in Wellington.
