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Offender Databases Bernard Hughes

Bernard Clifford Hughes

Alias

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Offences

Sexual violation of a five year old Rotorua boy in early 1998
Sent to borstal for having sexual intercourse with underage girls in 1956
Fined for the same sort of offences in 1963
Jailed for just 4 years for rape in 1976
Jailed for 15 months for sexual offences against underage girls in 1981

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

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Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1937

Current Location

At large in Claudelands, Hamilton

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 9 years 6 months in September 1998
Already released from custody

Background
From the Christchurch Press 10th Sept 1998
A Tauranga beneficiary with a 42-year history of sexual offending was labelled ``disgraceful'' when he appeared for sentencing before Justice Anderson in the High Court in Rotorua. Bernard Clifford Hughes, 60, represented by Paul Mabey, had previously pleaded guilty to sexually violating a five-year-old boy. He was jailed for 9 years six months yesterday. The matter had been referred to the High Court from the district court, after the judge concluded that there might be a case for Hughes being sentenced to an indefinite term of preventive detention.

Mr Mabey argued against this, instead asking Justice Anderson to impose a conventional, fixed-term penalty. ``While the nature of the offending and its gravity must be acknowledged, his previous offences are historic,'' Mr Mabey said. A pre-sentence report concluded that Hughes was sorry he had ruined the boy's life, and he admitted the offence. ``Preventive detention is not necessary and it would be obsessive to impose it when the need to protect society can be adequately satisfied by a finite term,'' Mr Mabey said. The public needed to be protected from Hughes, Crown Solicitor Greg Hollister-Jones said.

``This offence was deliberate and premeditated against a very young and vulnerable child, when the prisoner was in a position of trust with that child,'' Mr Hollister-Jones said. A psychiatric report said there was a significant chance that Hughes would re-offend, and that he had a tendency to minimise the gravity of his offending. In sentencing Hughes, Justice Anderson said that this was the fifth time he had come before the courts for sexual offences. In 1956 he was sent to borstal for having sexual intercourse with underage girls; in 1963 he was fined for the same sort of offences; in 1976 he was jailed for four years for rape; and in 1981 he was jailed for 15 months for sexual offences against underage girls.

``This present offending is a disturbing shift in the nature of your sexual criminality. It's really inexplicable. This poor little lad was known to you, trusted you, and was subjected to this sadistic horror,'' Justice Anderson said. ``This offending had occurred 17 years after you last appeared before the court on a sexual matter, and that long delay is significant because it shows that you can keep out of trouble if you put your mind to it.``You are almost 61 years of age. What a disgraceful way to act in the mature years of your life. The aggravating factors are obvious. The victim was child, a tiny tot. He trusted you, and you breached that trust. The family trusted you, and you breached that trust too,'' Justice Anderson said. The mitigating factor was the fact that Hughes had pleaded guilty and spared the boy the trauma of going through a trial, the judge said

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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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