Predator facing life in prison

A man with a history of deviant behaviour may be jailed indefinitely for his latest crimes, which include the sexual assault of a woman on a stream walkway.

William Hika was to be sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court last Friday for a range of crimes, including sexual violation and taking intimate photographs.

But Judge Jonathan Krebs declined to do so, instead moving the case to the High Court so the open-ended preventive detention sentence can be considered.

If sentenced to preventive detention, Hika would stay in prison for life unless he proved he was no longer an undue risk to people.

His offending involved taking intimate photographs of three different women in Palmerston

North late last year.

He photographed two of them while they were in bathrooms.

The most serious offending took place on November 26, when he spotted a woman on the Mangaone Stream walkway.

He hid the bicycle he was riding in bushes, surprised the woman from behind and told her he loved her.

The pair had not met before. He tried to kiss her, but ended up biting her lip, before the pair rolled down a bank.

The struggle continued until he sexually violated her.

Hika has a long history of criminal offending in this vein.

He was jailed in 2013 when he filmed a woman getting out of her shower and took a photo up a woman’s skirt in a sushi shop.

He has also been caught masturbating in The Esplanande and outside a woman’s bedroom window.

His use of a bicycle was also not new. He was jailed in 2010 for intimidation when he cycled after a woman running on the Manawatu¯ River walkway, wolfwhistling at her during the 30-minute ordeal.

Krebs said Hika’s history, refusal to believe he had a problem and high risk to adult women meant the serious preventive detention sentence had to be considered.

Hika will stay in custody until his sentencing in August.