Rapist wins appeal against ‘extreme’

A double rapist considered a high risk of reoffending has won an appeal against the public protection order he has been living under since his prison sentence ended.

Mark David Chisnall was sentenced in Whanganui in 2006 to eight years’ jail, and then in 2009 an earlier crime caught up with him and he was sentenced in New Plymouth to another three years.

When his sentence was about to end in 2016 the Department of Corrections asked for a monitoring order to be made, either a public protection order or a less restrictive extended supervision order with intensive monitoring for the first year.

Both measures control where the person can live and place restrictions on their freedom of movement.

A public protection order, which is open-ended, was imposed on Chisnall.

Under the order the person lives on prison grounds and is subject to a range of rules, including being accompanied if they go outside the prison wire.

Under an extended supervision order the person lives at an approved address and if they are intensively monitored they are accompanied and monitored for up to 24 hours a day.

A Court of Appeal decision issued on Friday said a public protection order had extreme deprivation of personal liberty and autonomy.

The evidence suggested a modified regime might manage Chisnall’s personal risk, the Court of Appeal said. It cancelled the public protection order and said an intensively monitored extended supervision order was appropriate.

The court said it could not impose the order directly so it sent his case back to be considered in the High Court, with an interim order filling the gap in the meantime.

Chisnall said he would consent to being intensively monitored for the first year of extended supervision. He accepted he presented a high risk, but not a very high imminent risk, of serious sexual offending.

Chisnall was 14 when he committed his first sexual offence at a Taranaki park in 2001 – one of four at the same park between then and 2005.

Two of his victims were children between 7 and 9 years old, while the other two were women. He hit one woman over the head with a piece of wood and violently raped another.