No parole for sex offender claiming amnesia
A MAN who sexually abused five girls over 25 years has been declined parole after proposing an address near a Dunedin school.
The Parole Board also noted Basil Raymond Heazlewood’s victims were strongly opposed to him living in the city, a recently released report showed.
The 80yearold now looks set to serve his entire sevenandahalfyear sentence since he consistently maintained he did not remember committing the abuse. The effective denials meant he had not undertaken specialist sexoffender treatment while behind bars.
Heazlewood’s sentence ends in November 2021.
He originally pleaded not guilty to 17 charges — all rapes and sex charges and one count of injuring with intent — but then accepted responsibility on the morning of his trial.
The victims were all girls under 16 when the incidents happened, some decades ago.
A psychologist who assessed Heazlewood presented a report to the Parole Board at his last hearing which cast doubt on the man’s memory loss. Given the prisoner remembered other things from the same time period, the specific lack of memory was “implausible”, the clinician said.
Despite that, Heazlewood met two of his victims at a restorativejustice conference recently, panel convener Judge Phil Gittos noted.
The parole report gave no detail on how the meeting had gone, but the victims maintained their view that they did not want the man released to Dunedin.
They previously told the board they wanted Heazlewood to serve his full prison sentence.
Judge Gittos suggested that may well transpire.
“It seems unlikely that Mr Heazlewood will be amenable to any worthwhile rehabilitation effort during the remainder of his sentence,” he said.
The prisoner would go before the Parole Board again in May next year.
Judge Gittos urged Heazlewood to work on a release plan involving him living outside Dunedin.