Man who snatched girl stays behind bars
A man who snatched a 5-year-old girl off the street and indecently assaulted her, sparking a desperate manhunt, says a treatment programme for similar offending 25 years ago never clicked with him.
He has also told the Parole Board about the challenges he’s faced down the years, saying he’s led a ‘‘disrupted’’ existence.
Brendan Paul Henson is serving eight years in jail for, in February 2016, abducting a girl on her way to school in Palmerston North, driving her into the Manawatu¯ countryside and offending against her. He then dropped her off on the other side of the city, while police mounted a large-scale search.
Henson, aged in his early 50s, is eligible for an early release after serving his five-year minimum term, but at a hearing yesterday parole was declined.
Henson will work with a psychologist to prepare him for a sex offender treatment programme in Whanganui Prison, and will have another parole hearing in 15 months.
Until the 2016 abduction, Henson had 25 years without offending, after he was convicted in the early 1990s in Australia.
‘‘It didn’t involve abduction or anything like that,’’ Henson said. ‘‘It was called indecent dealing ... I was 19, I think, 20 maybe.’’
He was sentenced to a year in jail for that, reduced to 10 months for time served. Prison rehabilitation programmes didn’t exist then, he said.
But he spent a year in a treatment programme for youth run by a Christian organisation.
‘‘I didn’t really do that well there. It was a churchy, religious kind of thing.’’
Henson said he was young then and had been through a lot since, including losing a partner to suicide.
‘‘I’ve had so many problems. Even as a child I was moved around the world. I lived in different countries.
‘‘I never got a chance to settle down. I’d make a group of friends and then the next thing I’d move to a different country again. My whole life became disrupted.
‘‘I’ve never had the chance to settle down and meet people without having to move along to somewhere else.’’
Henson had two supporters, who cannot be identified, accompany him at the hearing. One in particular had been ‘‘a big help’’ to him, which would continue after his release.
‘‘I didn’t have support out there before, but now I’ve got so much support.’’
In Whanganui prison, Henson has spent the past 31⁄ years work2 ing in the nursery.
At his sentencing in 2016, the court heard that two days before he abducted the girl off Shamrock St he’d indecently assaulted her by sitting next to her at a park and touching her leg. The girl’s sister intervened, and they ran home.
Defence lawyer Fergus Steedman told the court Henson hadn’t given an explanation for what he did.
The girl’s mother declined to comment on the parole decision. Henson had told Steedman before sentencing that the full effect of his actions didn’t hit home until he read the mother’s victim impact statement.