PM wrong on sex-offender register - McVicar
21 July 2015

The Founder of New Zealand’s largest privately funded Victims’ Rights and Justice Reform organisation says the Prime Minister doesn’t seem to understand the issues around paedophilia, the prolific nature of it and the harm paedophiles are causing to children.

Garth and Anne McVicar established the Sensible Sentencing Trust in 2001 as a response to their concerns about escalating violent crime and deteriorating social standards. With four daughters Garth and Anne believe they have a pretty big stake in the future direction of NZ.
From the humble beginnings on a farm in the Hawke’s Bay Sensible Sentencing Trust today has many thousands of supporters throughout New Zealand and has chalked up many wins which have contributed significantly to a drop in recorded violent crime.

Most recently the Government announced it would sign up to an agreement to establish a register to allow monitoring and information sharing about deported trans-Tasman criminals.

The trans-Tasman agreement is an idea the SST has been promoting for at least five years but McVicar says what the Govt has signed up to does not go far enough.

“This agreement will only allow the information to be shared amongst selected officials who mostly work an 8 to 5 daytime job, in contrast the criminals’ work 24/7 and are most prolific at night.”

McVicar says if the Government is serious about public protection then it must establish a publicly available sex-offender register.

“There are about 100 high risk offenders being deported back to New Zealand every year, the Police will not be able to monitor them all and will need the eyes and ears of the community to help them.”

The PM says such a register will cause vigilantism https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/public-sex-offender-register-would-encourage-vigilantes-pm-q02286.html

McVicar strongly disagrees and says the PM is either badly advised or is prepared to ignore the harm paedophiles are causing to vulnerable young children.

“New Zealand has a horrific level of child abuse with life-long ramifications to the children and families concerned. This trans-Tasman agreement will see many more sex-offenders released into unsuspecting communities. That is not acceptable and we [SST] believe children deserve much better.”

SST already operates a publicly available offender register at www.sst.org.nz which lists many offenders including two of the more recent trans-Tasman deportees.
http://offenders.sst.org.nz/offender.aspx?id=6198 & http://offenders.sst.org.nz/offender.aspx?id=6199

McVicar is urging the public to support SST in its drive for a publicly available sex-offender register. This is about the public’s right to know who lives amongst us and the risk they pose. ENDS

© Scoop Media