Wanganui is right to resist Beast among us

Sexual pervert Stewart Murray Wilson, aka the "Beast of Blenheim" - was smuggled into Wanganui by the Corrections Department during the weekend.

It was a clandestine affair. A special flight from Christchurch to Paraparaumu and then a road convoy to Kaitoke.

Like everything Corrections does with regards to Wilson, the transfer was announced after the fact. The government department is aware of the community's opposition and resentment and has done its best to ensure the least possible disruption to its plans.

That Wilson is now amongst us has also been defended as "a decision we must accept" by everybody from Corrections Minister Anne Tolley down to local schoolboy James Penn. Such rationale is wrong in principle and practice. Wanganui has a responsibility to resist.

The Beast need not be in Wanganui, he need not be anywhere, except in prison. That he is on parole, and in Wanganui, represents a fundamental failure of political will.

There are those who believe that the Beast, monstrous though his crimes are, is a media invention. That his advanced years suggest limited danger.

This contradicts the official verdict. The Parole Board and Corrections consider Wilson to be one of the greatest risks that they have ever managed. This is why so many pre-conditions of parole have been established, and why such elaborate and costly precautions have been taken.

The testimony to the Parole Board from its own psychologists is chilling. In essence, it reads: Wilson is hard-wired to sexually offend. All he requires is the opportunity.

Under existing legislation, Wilson would be preventively detained until proven safe. But because Wilson was sentenced in 1996, before preventative detention was legislated, the Government's argument is that the Beast must first be paroled, and then set free.

It was Corrections which convinced the Parole Board that Wanganui was the perfect place to parole Wilson. Our district has become his new prison. And his new hunting ground.

Except, that provision is not quite as all-encompassing as Corrections portrays. Most of the parole conditions aren't. With the stroke of a probation officer's pen, Wilson can have no fewer than 12 of his conditions waived.

Certainly that has been the experience with regard to another recidivist sexual offender on parole in Rolleston. With minders in tow, Lloyd Alexander McIntosh applied for a job in a bar, near his favourite quarry - schoolchildren. McIntosh has also been used by the appeaser brigade as to why Wanganui should accept its fate. Wanganui was one of his residences so, the argument goes, if Christchurch has McIntosh then Wanganui should have Wilson.

It is a ludicrous logic. Neither man should be released into the community irrespective of their origins. That Wanganui is resisting the latest such effort is to its credit.

The Government can pass legislation that retrospectively imposes an obligation upon dangerous criminals like Wilson to be proven safe before their parole.

Penn and others dismiss this obvious solution as "dangerous". Retrospective legislation is surprisingly common. Even in criminal cases. In the wake of a Supreme Court judgment against evidence gathered during the Urewera raids, Parliament validated police actions retrospectively. If the aim was to apply such a law to safeguard the community against bad people, then why cannot it be similarly applied to safeguard Wanganui against Wilson? That failure of political will is immoral. It also endangers our citizens.

So Wanganui has decided, by the unanimous and formal resolution of its elected representatives, to resist an evil man being risked amongst us. The best way to reduce risk is to remove it entirely.

But we must not accept our fate as, somehow, inevitable. That defeatism has no place. As Edmund Burke said: "In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing."

Wanganui will resist. It is the right thing to do.