Sex offender back in prison after lewd acts

A convicted sex offender on preventive detention has been recalled to prison after he exposed himself to women in two Christchurch car parks.

Desmond William Cox, 58, was found guilty of two charges of doing an indecent act following a judge-alone trial in the Christchurch District Court in June.

The two incidents happened late last year within 10 days of each other.

Cox was on parole after serving time behind bars for attacking and sexually assaulting a woman near the University of Canterbury.

The first incident happened on the afternoon of November 23 in the car park of Eastgate mall in Linwood.

A 29-year-old woman was sitting in her car when Cox parked his white Toyota van nearby. He got out and walked to the back of the van with his genitals fully exposed.

Cox stood a few metres from the woman and continued to stare at her until she reversed out of the car park. He returned to his vehicle when she drove away.

Just over a week later, he exposed himself to another woman who was parked on Roydvale Ave in Burnside. Cox parked next to the woman, despite the car park being almost empty.

He got out of the van with his genitals fully exposed. The 47-year-old woman said she looked away and when she looked back, Cox was standing directly in front of her car and was looking at her. His genitals were still exposed, and he thrust his hips towards her. The woman drove out of the car park and called police. While she was on the phone with police, Cox got back into his van and drove away.

During the trial, Cox claimed the victims were mistaken and what they had seen was actually a wooden dowel. He said the dowel was attached to his pants, and he used it to exercise the little finger on his right hand, which had been badly injured in a workplace accident. He called three witnesses who said he gripped the dowel as an exercise to ‘‘keep his finger from locking out straight’’.

Judge Quinton Hix rejected Cox’s defence and found him guilty of the charges. He was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment.

Cox appealed his convictions in the High Court, claiming a miscarriage of justice had occurred during his trial, but his appeal was dismissed by Justice Rob Osborne on Thursday.

Cox was still a young man when he was convicted of indecent assault in 1982.

In 1990, while living in Australia, he was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment after being convicted of breaking and entering, attempted rape and indecent assault. He attacked a woman after entering her house, assaulted her, and threatened to violate her 11-year-old daughter.

Cox served seven years and six months of his sentence before being deported to New Zealand in 1998.

He struck again in 2004 when he attacked an 18-year-old woman near the University of Canterbury and sexually assaulted her. He was convicted of unlawful sexual connection and sentenced to preventive detention with a minimum non-parole term of five years.

Preventive detention is an indefinite sentence imposed only on the most serious of offenders, and means the defendant is subject to release conditions for life.

At the time of Cox’s 2004 sentencing, the judge said he had to protect the community and the risk was ‘‘simply too high’’ given that Cox showed a lack of insight and victim empathy.

Cox was released on parole in July 2015, and recalled in March when the Parole Board considered his criminal history and a psychological report from 2015 that stated he had a medium to high risk of reoffending.

The board said it would request a further psychological assessment before Cox’s next parole hearing. He will again be eligible for parole in October.