Dance teacher’s parole denied

A Picton dance teacher jailed for child sex offences will not complete treatment outside of prison, after his victim described the idea as ‘‘dangerous’’.

The board said in May that Stayz Raukawa had been unable to complete a sex offender course and it would consider allowing him to finish the programme ‘‘in the community’’.

However the idea was rejected at Raukawa’s third parole hearing last month, the board said in a decision released on Thursday. Raukawa was sentenced to threeand-a-half years’ imprisonment on four charges of unlawful sexual connection and eight counts of indecency with a 15-year-old girl. He was in his 30s when the offending happened in 2005.

He appealed the sentence and it was reduced to three years and two months after credit was given for his work in the community. He became eligible for parole in January.

Raukawa had completed some programmes in prison, though the parole board would not reveal which ones.

He had strong support from his family, showed victim empathy and accepted responsibility for other unrelated offending, the board said.

But he had not completed the sex offender programme. The board was to consider whether the programme could be offered ‘‘in the community’’ at his third parole hearing in June. He had a new, approved parole address in a location suppressed by the board.

But his victim, Rebecca Sloan, spoke with the parole board the morning before his hearing.

‘‘She considered that Mr Raukawa needed to complete a sex offender’s programme before he was safe to release to the community,’’ the board said.

Sloan fought to have her automatic name suppression lifted so Raukawa could be publicly identified when he was convicted in 2015.

She was not available for comment on Thursday, but slammed the idea of allowing him to finish treatment in the community when it was first floated in May, describing the news as a ‘‘punch to the stomach’’.

‘‘I went through this to stop him hurting anyone else and the board want to let him free without doing this important course first. That’s dangerous.’’

The board declined parole and scheduled another parole hearing for February, when he would have completed the programme.