Sex abuser's bid to stay in NZ rejected

A Samoan man with 16 criminal convictions, including the sexual abuse of a pensioner, has lost his appeal to stay in New Zealand.

Teilona Pula, 37, argued that he had a child and family here but the Deportation Review Tribunal dismissed the appeal as it found he was a serious offender and an ongoing risk to the public.

In its decision, the tribunal said Pula's criminal history showed an alarming pattern of increasing seriousness of the offending.

"It is unfortunate that the appellant's offending did not come to the attention of [the Immigration Service] earlier. We observed from the previous-convictions list that at least half of the previous convictions were committed prior to his grant of residence in New Zealand."

In 1989, the service had sought a removal warrant for Pula, who had arrived on a visitor's permit two years earlier, but attempts to serve it on him failed.

Eight criminal convictions later, Pula was in 1997 issued a residence permit as he had entered into a de facto marriage and was about to become a father.

His convictions by then included theft, assault, threatening to kill, resisting police, taking a motor vehicle, breaching periodic detention and burglary.

In 1998, Pula was sentenced to imprisonment of three years and three months for threatening to kill.

After his release, Pula in 2000 broke into the pensioner unit of a 66-year-old woman and sexually assaulted her, punched her in the head and smothered her face with a pillow.

He took $60 from her handbag and a video recorder and television.

At his trial, the presiding judge said Pula's behaviour was "worse than that of an animal" and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.

The tribunal said it had no difficulty in finding Pula's offending at the serious end of the scale and noted his heavy use of alcohol as highly relevant given that most of his offending took place while he was drunk.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Labour, which oversees immigration matters, said the department would comment on the case once file information was available, she said.