Oamaru man impregnates daughter: Jail for incest, but no sex offender treatment

The man - aged in his 50s and whose name is permanently suppressed - was considered a low-to-moderate risk of reoffending. Stock photo / 123RF

An Oamaru man who impregnated his daughter will not undertake specialist sex-offender treatment while behind bars.

The man — aged in his 50s and whose name is permanently suppressed — was considered a low-to-moderate risk of reoffending, a psychologist told the Parole Board at a hearing last month.

It was agreed the man should not undergo a group-based child sex offender treatment programme or an adult sex offender treatment programme.

The reasons for the decision, as well as all of the man's personal issues, were withheld in documents released to the Otago Daily Times.

The prisoner was declined parole, board chair Sir Ron Young said, because "he remains effectively untreated".

He was sentenced in late 2018 to three years, four months' imprisonment before the Dunedin District Court after admitting three counts of incest.

The victim, the court heard at sentencing, became pregnant twice within six months; one of the pregnancies could definitively be attributed to the defendant.

The sexual abuse began shortly after the victim moved back home in April 2017, court documents showed.

The father drove the teenager to Kurow for "an outing". On the way home, he stopped in a rest area and the pair had sex in the vehicle.

Over the next seven months, the incest happened as often as once a week.

The acts were committed in secluded areas of North Otago, and once at a Dunedin motel.

The defendant claimed his daughter should have been charged too, because she had initiated their first encounter.

At the parole hearing, the prisoner told the board he had done some stopping-violence work with a counsellor.

He had constructed a safety plan to assure the board he could be safely released but Sir Ron was not convinced.

"In a brief discussion with him today, he only had a rudimentary understanding of what that plan was," he said.

The man had organised accommodation for his release, but the Parole Board would likely require more oversight.

The offender will next be seen by the board in May; his sentence end date is in March 2021.