Hughes said he falsely claimed to have “homicidal ideations” to avoid being labelled a child sex offender in prison.
He believed his lawyers didn’t act in his best interests, saying he was coerced to confess.
Hughes has spent six years in prison, surpassing his minimum parole period by one year, however, he is still considered to be a high risk to the community and of violent reoffending.
Six different stories were given by Hughes as explanations for his offending, and the courts said he “has difficulty in adhering to the truth”, saying whatever he believes will serve his “best short-term” interests.
Hughes was in Washydyke, an industrial suburb in Timaru on the night of December 3, 2013.
He had been in his car smoking synthetic cannabis before approaching the girl about 8pm, grabbing her around her neck and pulling her off her bike with such force that she was knocked out.
He dragged her backwards over a barbed wire fence and into some nearby bushes and only stopped when he was noticed by a member of the public. He then fled the scene.
His car was found by police with an unloaded .22 rifle and machete and had the keys in the ignition.
Hughes later admitted to police he had intended to kill the girl, after first saying he wanted to steal her bike because he had run out of petrol in his car. His house was just 700m away.
He received preventive detention in 2014 because of his admission of “homicidal ideations”, and his own suggestion he could offend again.
Despite his age at the time of sentencing, preventive detention would not have been given lightly and places the onus on Hughes to show the Parole Board he can safely return to the community.
“In this case the safety of the community is the paramount consideration,” the court said.
Hughes had written a letter to his mother that said he had been watching Born To Kill documentaries on television and that he “could easily do some of those things and easily end up with 20 life sentences”.
“Mr Hughes’ acknowledgement to his mother that he had prepared lists of people whom he wanted to kill is a very disturbing feature of this case,” the decision said.
He told psychologists he had homicidal ideations, and that the girl looked “like an easy target”.
When she rode back to him on her bike “he felt a sense of inevitability and that he needed and wanted to kill her”, a psychologist reported.
Hughes said in 2014, “I would have killed her. Sometimes I don’t think about killing people for weeks, but then I start thinking about that kind of stuff.”
Hughes had 23 previous convictions in the District Court and 25 Youth Court appearances, all mainly for theft and burglary.
At his appeal hearing in October, Hughes was cross-examined by the Crown. The courts said although he tried to minimise his offending, the answers that he gave were “revealing”.
Crown prosecutor Charlotte Brook put to Hughes that it “wasn’t going to end well for [the victim] was it?”.
His “chilling” response - “probably not”.
