KEY POINTS:
Police and the Department of Corrections publicly apologised yesterday for mistakes that allowed a man who should have been in jail to drive the car that killed their daughter.
Debbie Ashton, 20, died after the car driven by Jonathan Alan Barclay crashed into hers in December 2006.
Barclay should have been in jail, but was under a police witness protection programme and used his assumed name in court when he was charged with a driving offence in November the same year.
The court did not know his real name, and he was treated as a first offender.
In May last year, he was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for manslaughter for causing the death of Ms Ashton.
"In this tragic case ... police focused on the risk to the witness, however failed to manage the risk of the witness to the community he was relocated to," Superintendent Win van der Welde, police national manager of crime services which runs the programme, said yesterday.
"For this I have personally apologised to the Ashton family."
Corrections' general manager of community probation and psychological services, Katrina Casey, said the department had not managed the offender "to our expected standards".
"I have apologised personally and in writing to the Ashton family."
She expressed her deepest regret for the shortcomings revealed in the ministerial inquiry carried out by Kristy McDonald QC.
"We allowed the covert nature and the need for secrecy around the ... programme to interfere with our proper management of the parolee."
Ms Casey said one of her department's former employees would have been subject to employment action if they had not already left Corrections.
Ms Ashton's mother, Judy Ashton, told the Herald she felt far from satisfied after the release of the report and the apologies.
"We relied on them to get it right the first time, so what's to say they are not going to mess up a second time," she said.
Police and the Corrections Department had admitted they had got it wrong, but "only after we have had to push ... only after we started rattling chains".
They had to have been aware when the man was sentenced to 5-and-a-half years' jail for manslaughter last year what had happened, Mrs Ashton said.
"And nobody made any attempt to come and apologise to us or talk to us until we started pushing for this inquiry."
It had taken nearly six months to get the draft ministerial report, and another seven months to get it finished, "and these have been the longest seven months of my life."
She had not yet even been able to grieve for her daughter.
"If I had let myself go down that track, I wouldn't have had the energy to [pursue the inquiry]. That's something I need to deal with once this has got some kind of conclusion."
Mrs Ashton said the thing that really frightened her was that Barclay, a hardened criminal, would be up for parole in March next year.
"He'll be out, with a new identity, protected forever by the police."
Ms Casey said Corrections had significantly overhauled its procedures to "make it absolutely clear that just because an offender is on the witness protection programme that does not override all of the requirements of the sentence or order they might be on".
Barclay's lawyer, his probation officer, a Department of Corrections official and police national headquarters all knew he was using a different name but no one told the judge in the case.
Ms McDonald found police and probation staff contributed to Barclay being at large at the time of the crash. Her report said staff put too much weight on the covert nature of the witness protection programme and protecting the offender's identity.
- NZPA / HERALD REPORTER
