KEY POINTS:
The 83-year-old widow beaten, bruised and left for dead in her burning house says elderly people should never let their guard down.
Dinah Gavin was pleased with the sentence handed down to her attacker, Brett Stuart Wellm, who will serve at least 17 years behind bars, but warned pensioners to be vigilant.
"Elderly people shouldn't think that they are safe in their homes because you cannot be certain that you are," Gavin wrote in a statement released by police. "My home was well and truly secured."
Wellm, 44, had pleaded guilty to what Justice Rhys Harrison described as an attack that was "sadistic cruelty on a scale which is beyond comprehension".
He tricked his way into Gavin's home in Howick, Auckland, with a Bible, bound her hands and legs and attacked her with a pair of hedgeclippers and a spade last November. He removed skin from her arms and hands, stole jewellery and alcohol and left her for dead before setting her home on fire.
Gavin spent 25 days in hospital recovering from her injuries, which also included broken fingers and a fractured skull and ribs.
In sentencing in the High Court at Auckland, Justice Harrison said the attack would never have happened if police had a warning on their system noting Wellm was wanted.
He had absconded from his home detention from an earlier offence and was recalled to prison by the Parole Board - a fact Community Probation and Psychological Services said it advised Waitakere police of by fax. But a month before the attack, a non-sworn police employee found no record of the arrest warrant for Wellm and turned him away when he tried to surrender himself at the Henderson station.
"I can only hope [police] implement measures to ensure that an error of this magnitude is never repeated," Justice Harrison said.
The Herald on Sunday can also reveal that Wellm's girlfriend has been charged as an accessory after the fact and will be sentenced soon.
Wellm returned to the Howick flat where they were living and told her what he had done, showing her the bloodied overalls and gloves, and gave her the alcohol and jewellery.
A friend of Dinah Gavin said she was a remarkable woman, who was trying to put her ordeal behind her.
Her memory and speech are returning but she has scars over her body and trusts no one.
