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Offender Databases Barry Brown

Barry Grant Brown

Alias

.

Offences

Sexual assault of a five year old Wellington boy in 1998
Previous convictions for indecent assault on small children from 1982, 1985 and 1990

Victims

.

Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1966

Current Location

At large in Strathmore, Wellington

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to just 5 years in August 1998
Released July 2001

Background
NZ Herald stories here and here
He was awarded $25.000 in damages after being identified in a Police leaflet drop, see story here
A convicted paedophile told Wellington District Court today he lived in fear and was regularly assaulted and abused after being outed by police to his Wellington neighbours.

Barry Grant Brown, a 39-year-old Wellington beneficiary, who is suing police for $80,000 for outing him, had his bid for continued name suppression dismissed at a separate sitting by the Court of Appeal today. Brown was freed from Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison in July 2001 after being jailed for five years in 1998 for pulling a five-year-old boy into a Newtown flat and sexually assaulting him.

He had previous convictions for indecent assault on small children from 1982, 1985 and 1990. Brown is of limited intellect, suffers from a number of disabilities including severe epilepsy, and is illiterate. As a result, his opening statement was read to the court by his lawyer Dale La Hood.

Following his release from Rimutaka Prison, Brown was ordered by his probation officer to live in a flat in suburban Strathmore. He was visited by two police officers on August 3, 2001, one in plainclothes and the other in uniform. "They never gave me their names," Brown said in his statement. "I asked if they had a warrant and they said they didn't need one. I felt like I had no choice but to let them into my house."

The officers asked Brown what his parole conditions were, he said. "The police officers then asked if they could take a photo for identification purposes. I believed I had no choice but to let them take a photo."

Brown said he became agitated when police began to question him about appliances he had in the flat which he repaired as a hobby. "They made me feel like I was doing wrong by having them in my home."

A photographer with the former Dominion newspaper knocked on his door on August 10 and Brown told him to "bugger off". The next day an article appeared in the newspaper. Around this time he became aware of police had distributed leaflets about him. "When I walked down the street people would come out of their houses and abuse me, yelling things like 'kiddie f**ker'."

Brown said he was physically abused on two occasions by men he had never met before. One man pushed him down the stairs of his apartment building, leaving him with bruises on his hip and shoulder. The second man punched him with a closed fist twice in the mouth, chipping his two front teeth. Brown told the court his teeth still had not been fixed because he could not afford the $1000 dental bill.

Brown went to Kilbirnie Police station and pressed the assistance button outside, telling police he had been assaulted and wanted to make a report. "They laughed and told me to go home." The abuse continued for the rest of the year with one man in Newtown assaulting him every time he attended a programme designed to rehabilitate sexual offenders at the City Mission, Brown said. "I was upset, angry and scared about the way I was being treated by the police, the media and the public." "I was so scared I felt prison was the safest place for me."

Brown said he became so paranoid he was referred to a psychologist but even became suspicious the counsellor was conspiring with the media. Mr La Hood told the court his client was seeking compensation of $80,000: $50,000 for police misconduct and $30,000 for injuries suffered in the assaults against him. The state had a duty to rehabilitate offenders. Police had breached Brown's confidence and he had lost his privacy after being outed. "The actions were unlawful and the officers were reckless," he told the court. There was a "foreseeable consequence of vigilante attack" following the pamphlet drop.

Police used improper means to obtain the photo of Brown and were in a privileged position as a state agency to access information about him, Mr La Hood said. On issue was whether the use of the photo was unlawful. "It certainly never would have been consented to for this purpose." The civil case before Judge Robert Spear is expected to take three days.

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Corrections and Additional Information
We endeavour to make this database as accurate as possible, but we are at the mercy of whatever information we can find in various online and offline archives. We rely on the public - that is, people like you - to fill in the gaps that we cannot. If you wish to submit additional information or a correction to this file CLICK HERE . Privacy: Trust policy is that all sources are treated as strictly confidential unless we are explicitly told otherwise. If you wish to see a file removed from this database certain conditions must be met by the offender set out HERE Note that this does NOT apply for those that are the primary offender in a murder, rape, or any sexual offending involving minors. We do not enter into correspondence regarding the guilt/innocence of offenders. Such correspondence is not responded to, especially if the offender concerned has a number of prior convictions

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