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Offender Databases James Bennett

James McLeod Bennett

Alias

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Offences

Recidivistic sexual violation by rape, abduction, and stupefying of women including a minor up to January 1996, described as a sexual deviant. Also theft from same women.

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

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Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1957

Current Location

At large

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to just 9 and a half years in December 1996
Released as far as we know April 2005

Background
From the Evening Post 21/12/1996
A Wellington man has been sentenced to 9 years 6 months imprisonment for sexually violating a woman escort he had stupefied to render her unconscious when he appeared in the High Court in Wellington yesterday. James McLeod Bennett, 39, Wellington, was found guilty of stupefying or rendering unconscious two women on consecutive nights in January. He was also found guilty of stealing $190 from the first woman and abducting and sexually violating the second woman. Justice Heron also sentenced Bennett to three years imprisonment for stupefying the first woman, five years for stupefying the second woman and five years for abducting her. He was convicted and discharged on the theft charge.

All prison terms were to be concurrent. Justice Heron said the women had gone to Bennett's motel rooms where he drugged them and raped the second woman. "There is a sinister element in the stupefaction. The woman would have consented to sex but was given no opportunity to consent because she was overcome," he said. He said Bennett had other convictions for sexually deviant behaviour which had involved exhibitionism. His offending normally followed a period of depression. One of the offences had been against an eight-year-old girl. "These charges are now compounded and complicated by the stupefaction and rape," he said.

Justice Heron said prosecutor Kate Feltham had asked for preventive detention but he was not persuaded it was needed at this stage. "Let there be no mistake Bennett, what I have said is a matter of record on the prison file and forever. If there is the slightest evidence you have not put this behind you when you come out of prison you will certainly serve preventive detention and spend most of the rest of your life in custody," he told Bennett. He said the women had been seriously disturbed by the incidents and he wanted to make it clear that people in the sex industry were not to be regarded as fair game by their clients and not to be used as mere chattels to be rendered unconscious.

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Corrections and Additional Information
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