Dunedin peeping Tom voyeur sentenced to rehabilitation has supervision and therapy increased

James King was sentenced to intensive supervision during which he will likely receive specialised therapy. Photo / Rob Kidd

When police interviewed a Dunedin voyeur he said he did not know what drove him to snoop around strangers' homes. Rob Kidd speaks to a victim about the human cost of the crimes and an expert about how such offenders can be reformed.

A perennial peeping Tom has again been caught lurking outside Dunedin homes and rifling through underwear drawers.

One victim has described chasing 26-year-old James Daniel King away from his Abbotsford home and spoke of his fears his family member had been deliberately targeted.

A forensic psychologist, meanwhile, says those who commit such crimes are not "monsters" and the key to changing their behaviour is empathy and therapy.

King has certainly experienced the latter.

He was sentenced to supervision — a rehabilitative sentence — in 2017 and 2019 for offending related to his voyeuristic predilections.

The latter spree involved him repeatedly visiting a Cargill St flat where he was caught spying through a woman's bedroom window twice during a three-week period.

King was also rumbled outside a Leith St residence when a woman, preparing for bed, heard footsteps in an alleyway behind the house.

She activated the torch on her cellphone and opened her curtains to reveal the man leering at her with his face almost touching the glass.

Sentenced

When King appeared in the Dunedin District Court last month, prosecutor Sergeant Chris George urged the judge to "ramp [the sentence] up".

"It clearly hasn't done the job," he said of previous approaches taken by the court.

Judge Josephine Bouchier called the defendant's crimes the most serious of their type but stressed the two charges of being unlawfully in an enclosed yard to which he had pleaded guilty carried a maximum penalty of three months' imprisonment.

She imposed four months' community detention (a curfew to be served at his parents' home) and 12 months' intensive supervision.

The court heard the plan was for King to undertake the STOP programme — specialist treatment for those exhibiting harmful sexual behaviour.

Close call

In the darkness of a July morning last year, an Abbotsford woman returning from the gym saw a car cruise past her slowly as she entered her home.

Soon after, the woman's sister heard heavy breathing outside the bathroom and noticed someone trying to open the window from the outside.

She called out to her husband, Nathan Gunn, who raced to a patio door, peering into the half-light.

When King bolted for his car, he gave chase.

"I sprinted out, ripped open the passenger door, but he had it started then he was just gone," Gunn said.

"Then I tried to focus on the number plate, which is pretty hard when your heart's going 100 miles an hour."

He had since installed cameras at the property, at significant cost, and had been left pondering worst-case scenarios.

"What happens if I wasn't home and he did get in? We've got a 2-year-old in the house. It actually hit me for six," Gunn said.

Suspicious

At one of King's first court appearances his counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner described the crimes as "random".

Gunn, however, believed there might be a more sinister aspect to it.

Dr Tess Patterson says it is unhelpful to portray offenders as "monsters". Photo / Supplied

More than two months after King was prowling around that house, he went to the South Dunedin home of his second victim — a woman who attended the same gym as the first.

This time, the defendant got inside the property through an unlocked window and made his way into a bedroom where he rummaged through drawers.

In the next bedroom he poked through the resident's underwear before leaving — empty-handed — the same way he entered.

After he was apprehended over the Abbotsford incident, police opted not to prosecute, instead sending the matter through the Te Pae Oraka process.

The scheme was rolled out in the region last year to hold offenders accountable without hauling them through the courts and leaving them saddled with a conviction.

But when King was collared over the second episode, the deal was off the table.

Treatment

Saunderson-Warner said her client was motivated to get the help he needed.

"One of the issues when he's struggling with his mental health, he becomes extremely impulsive," she said

"He wants to get on top of the underlying issues."

University of Otago department of psychological medicine head Dr Tess Patterson said while she could not comment on King's case specifically, the reason for such conduct was often complex and wide-ranging.

"There's never just one pathway," she said.

Generally, those afflicted felt shame and that was often a barrier to seeking help.

Patterson said sexual offenders were "ordinary people".

"They're anyone. They're your neighbour, the fireman, the 15-year-old girl," she said.

Demonising them was unproductive.

"Those who engage in harmful sexual behaviour are frequently labelled in an unhelpful way — like 'monster' or 'predator' — which complicates the matter as it suggests that we can spot them. And that hinders society from viewing them as in need of treatment.

"They're stigmatised, they're ashamed, they're embarrassed."

Critical, Patterson said, was treatment of the individual as early as possible and establishing a relationship between clinician and patient — "respecting the person but not OKing the behaviour".

"If there's more understanding about this out there generally, you'll get people seeking help," she said.