Parents 'lose' son to sex offender

The family warned schools and daycare centres that the abuser was up for parole. Image altered to protect identities. Photo / Alan Gibson

The parents of a young boy who endured 18 months of sexual abuse want harsher sentences for offenders who admit to molesting other victims unwilling to lay charges.

The Waihi couple, who say they "lost" their son to jailed sex offender Keith William Honey, said the former mine worker admitted when charged that there had been other victims.

Honey told police about at least four other victims, but none have chosen to lay complaints.

Instead, they have said they want to see Honey serve the whole five-year sentence imposed on him in 2009 for indecently assaulting a boy nearly a decade earlier - when the victim was aged between 7 and 8 - and for him to receive help while in jail.

The boy's parents say they gained some satisfaction from the Parole Board's acknowledging Honey's other victims in its decision to decline his application for release when he appeared before members for the first time this month.

"We were ecstatic that we were able to take this evidence to the parole hearing - we had written proof on Government documentation [of] what we always knew inside," the mother said.

Honey befriended the boy's family and began "grooming" his victim when the lad was just 5. Pressured to keep the abuse a secret, the boy spent years enduring nightmares, before finally speaking out in May 2009.

"He'd wake up screaming ... Now we know what the monsters are," his mother said.

The boy's father said his son had received a "life sentence" from the abuse. The boy had collapsed at times, once having to be taken from his school by ambulance.

"My wife wakes up and says, 'I didn't save my son.' That's a nightmare I've got live with, let alone my son's nightmare. He's destroyed, but he'll probably get through life.

"As a father, I don't have a son, because I lost my son when he was 6 years old.

"I have a person who I see every day and I get told by him, 'I know you're my Dad, but that's as far as we go'."

The parents say Honey's other offending should have meant a tougher sentence and want a law change to allow for stiffer penalties in such cases.

But University of Auckland law professor Warren Brookbanks believes any offences need to be tested by the courts before being considered at sentencing.

"Normally, the court certainly takes into account, in sentencing, a person's previous convictions and that can have a bearing on the type of penalty or severity of penalty imposed - but it does depend on the person having been convicted on those offences.

"I think courts would be generally cautious in putting too much weight on admissions a person may have made that have never been subject to criminal prosecution."

When they learned of this month's parole hearing, the parents set about informing schools and daycare centres in Waihi and dropped dozens of leaflets near where Honey lived.

The Parole Board eventually received 22 pages of submissions ontop of those made by the boy'sfamily.

Board spokeswoman Sonja de Friez said that as an untreated sex offender, Honey was considered a risk to the community and refused parole.

She said 90 per cent of all offenders seen at their first hearing were refused parole, and overall the board declined 72 per cent of all applications.

Honey will be seen again in July next year and must be released at the end of his sentence in 2014.