Rapist on preventive detention can’t be treated, Parole Board told

Joseph Warren Lepper at the High Court in 2014. Photo / Otago Daily Times, File

A rapist who tried to abduct a woman in central Dunedin cannot undertake sex offender treatment in prison because of his behaviour, the Parole Board has heard.

Joseph Warren Lepper, 46, is one of only a handful of inmates in the country currently on preventive detention — an indefinite jail term — because of an extensive criminal history involving violence and sexual violation.

He appeared before the Parole Board last month and was declined release, primarily because he had not been allowed on a specialist sex offender programme.

“It seems that, initially, he could not get on the programme because of a clash with another offender. Then he could not get on the programme in mid-2022 because he was on high-security classification,” board chairman Sir Ron Young said.

Lepper remained a high-security prisoner and would not be admitted onto the course until that level had come down.

“Mr Lepper gave us a history of what he saw was his unfair treatment by Corrections, including unfair misconduct charges, abuse by other prisoners that was not dealt with by Corrections and abuse by a prison officer,” Young said.

Parole Board chair Sir Ron Young. Photo / Aaron Smale, IKON Media, File

But the prisoner also accepted his own wayward behaviour had contributed to his problems.

At a parole hearing in April last year, the board heard Lepper had been in trouble for threatening harm, assaults, threats to harm himself and spreading excrement on prison walls.

After previously spending time at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison, he had since been transferred back to the Otago Corrections Facility, but it seemed little had changed.

Notes on Lepper’s prison file described him as “demanding, verbally aggressive and somewhat unpredictable”.

He remained an above-average risk of sexual reoffending, the board heard.

Lepper was sentenced to preventive detention after an attempted abduction in Vogel St in 2014.

He and Zane Alexander McVeigh drove from Christchurch to commit the crime, the court heard at sentencing.

Zane McVeigh.

The victim resisted her attackers until nearby residents came to her aid but she was left bruised and missing handfuls of hair.

The incident came just seven months after Lepper had been released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence for rape and unlawful sexual connection.

At best, Young said, the prisoner may enter sex offender rehabilitation next year.

Lepper will next see the Parole Board in June 2025.