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Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence was last night meeting with the alarmed residents of a country town in a bid to keep vigilantes at home and allow one of Australia's most notorious paedophiles to live in relative peace.
But at the same time State Attorney-General Kerry Shine was preparing an appeal against a judge's decision to quash charges of child sex against Dennis Raymond Ferguson and set him free on the grounds that he could never receive a fair trial, such was his notoriety.
The decision has infuriated the State Government, legal experts and child protection agencies, who regard it as an attack on the competence of the judiciary and fear that the ruling would effectively place Ferguson, 60, above the law.
The furore that forced Ferguson from his first hiding place to another rural retreat - where care by a religious group is costing the state A$1000 (NZ$1270) a day - has also opened new issues about the release and placement of convicted paedophiles after they have served their sentences.
And it has sparked debate on the rights to privacy of paedophiles after jail, with civil libertarians attacking the release of Ferguson's whereabouts, in conflict with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who believes communities have the right to know when child sex offenders live among them.
Ferguson's previous crimes have seen him included on the national register of child sex offenders, and he was ordered to report his whereabouts to police for 15 years after his release in 2003 from a 14-year sentence for kidnapping and raping three children in 1987.
After being chased from virtually every community in which he has tried to settle since his 2003 release, Ferguson has nowhere left to go.
Urging enraged locals not to force him to run again, Spence said he had to live somewhere.
Spence appeared to have her work cut out for her as the people of Carbrook, near Brisbane, prepared for last night's meeting: many had turned up with placards, even a noose.
"Since we found out [that Ferguson had moved to an adjoining property] it's been two days of hell," Carbrook resident Kay Stuart, mother of two daughters aged 10 and 14, told Brisbane's Courier-Mail.
"Now the monster is in our back yard and it's terrifying." Ferguson gained national notoriety after he befriended the wife of another prisoner he had met while serving time in a Sydney jail. The man had been convicted of sexually assaulting his own children.
Ferguson convinced the woman to allow him to take the children - a 6-year-old girl and two brothers aged 7 and 8 for a holiday. Police found him naked in a Queensland motel, with the girl sleeping naked in his bed.
He later served another 15 months after breaking a ban on living near a school, and taking a 17-year-old girl known to welfare workers as a lover.
In 2005 he was again arrested and charged with the sexual assault of two girls, aged 4 and 5. One charge was later dropped.
Jetty Johnson, founder of the child protection organisation Bravehearts, said: "[Ferguson] should never have been released in the first place. It's just an absolute nonsense."
