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Offender Databases Jason Mathieson

Jason John Mathieson

Alias

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Offences

Having unlawful sex with a 14 year old girl in Somerfield, Canterbury in October 2001
Was out on parole at the time for the rape of a 76 year old woman
Please note that there are other people who have the misfortune to share the same name!

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

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Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1976

Current Location

Unknown

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to 9 years with a 5 year cumulative term in June 2002

Background
Court of appeal decision here
THE PRESS, June 21st 2002
A 14-year-old girl may have been looking for an adventure when she set off to walk to Cashmere after a night out in Christchurch on October 21. Instead, along the way, she met a man who was out on parole towards the end of a nine-year jail sentence for the rape of a 76- year-old woman. The encounter with the girl led to Jason John Mathieson being recalled to prison to serve the rest of his term for rape. In the Christchurch District Court, he got another five years added to the present term, when he was sentenced for having unlawful sex with a girl aged between 12 and 16.

The girl had gone into the city with friends that night, and eventually, she set off to walk to her girlfriend's home in Cashmere. She got to the Thorrington area at 1.30am, where she met a 25-year-old man. It was Mathieson, who had been "spotting" -- heating cannabis oil and inhaling the fumes -- for many hours. Mathieson asked her to go into the grounds of Thorrington School for a smoke. He meant cannabis oil; she thought he meant a cigarette. Mathieson took more drugs, but the girl declined. He made advances to her. She would later tell a jury trial that he held a knife at her face, but the jury evidently rejected that.

Nevertheless, Judge Stephen Erber believes that she felt trapped and had to give in to him. With intercourse appearing inevitable, she told Mathieson that she was a virgin, and asked him to use a condom. He did not have one, but had sex with her anyway. When the two parted, the girl went to a service station nearby to seek help. The station's security video shows her distressed state. Mathieson was charged with rape and offering to administer the class B drug cannabis resin. He went to trial where the jury found him not guilty of rape, but convicted him on the alternative charge of having unlawful sexual intercourse with an under-age girl. During the trial, he pleaded guilty to the drugs charge.

Defence counsel Elizabeth Lorimer said Mathieson was an open and communicative young man. "The complainant never described him in the early stages as being creepy or frightening at all," she said. Unfortunately, he seemed to have little insight into the factors that led to this offending, she said. Clearly, drug use was the major influence. Judge Erber said: "Why did this young woman go along with you into the school grounds ... ? The answer is that she was 14. She was looking for an adventure and she went along to see what would happen, but events got past her ability to control." Judge Erber jailed Mathieson for five years, and made the sentence cumulative on his present term.

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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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