[WALKING FREE] PRODUCER: LAURIE CLARKE REPORTER: MIKE McROBERTS Karen intro: Tonight we ask are sexual offenders walking free? We'll hear claims that the sexual abuse of pre-school children isn't being prosecuted, that when the alleged victim is under five, it's too hard to get convincing testimony. The case doesn't reach trial, the accused doesn't even have to front up in court. Even when there is a prosecution it can easily fail. One mother with a pre-school son has talked to 20/20 about the difficulties of taking a child abuse case through our justice system. She thought the man was guilty. She says the police, even the jury, agreed. But he wasn't convicted. Mike McRoberts with the story. MIKE (V/O): This man has twice appeared in court on charges of sexually abusing a child, and twice he's walked free. This man who we'll call Neville still lives just minutes away from one of his alleged victims. Sam is five, his mum Linda raises him and his brother and sister by herself. They live in a small farming community. She'd not long been separated from her husband when Neville befriended her. LINDA: He came and did some fencing for me. MIKE: But there was no romantic link between you and him? LINDA: No, no. MIKE: He's gay. LINDA: Yes he is. MIKE: Over a couple of months Linda saw more and more of Neville. He'd built up a trust with her and her children. LINDA: I actually felt I was quite safe with him because he was homosexual, I thought, well he's not going to harass me in any way, he's not going to be hitting on me, you know he had a boyfriend at the time so I felt quite safe. MIKE (V/O): Guy Fawkes 18 months ago, Neville invited Linda and the children to his place. The kids enjoyed an evening of fireworks. Linda enjoyed a few drinks with Neville and his partner. As the evening wore on Neville convinced Linda to stay the night. It was a 20 minute drive home and Sam and his brother and sister had already fallen asleep in the lounge. The next morning Linda was woken by four year old Sam. He was in a distressed state. LINDA: He said to me that Neville had drank his meemee, meemee in Tongan means urine, and he said that Neville had stuck his finger up his bum, and eaten the pooh off his finger. MIKE: So what went through your mind when your son told you about this? LINDA: I was in a bit of a hurry to get out of there after that had happened. I was so shocked. MIKE: Linda gathered up the children and went home where she rang the police. They told her not to bath Sam or change his clothes. He spent the rest of the day at Starship Children's Hospital. LINDA: They did urine tests, blood tests, they poked him in every place you could possibly imagine, they took hair out of his head, they took hair samples for forensic testing. MIKE: And how was he through all this? LINDA: He was a little bit shy, I think he was embarrassed, very, very quiet. MIKE (V/O): Police tried to get Sam to repeat his allegation on video, but he became withdrawn and wouldn't speak to the female counsellor. DET. SENIOR SERGEANT GARY LENDRUM: Although four attempts were made, the boy wouldn't make the disclosures in an evidential way that we could use in court. MIKE (V/O): Det. Senior Sgt Gary Lendrum was the investigating officer. (I/V): Did it concern you, you didn't have that allegation on tape? GARY LENDRUM: It did. It would have been nice to have it, however I still felt that as a result of the forensic examination there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the charges against this gentleman. MIKE: How strong was that DNA evidence? GARY LENDRUM: Very strong. MIKE (V/O): Forensic evidence was taken from semen found on the shaft of Sam’s penis and in a fist sized stain on the crotch of Sam’s trousers. DNA testing showed the penis sample was 120 times more likely to have come from Neville than any other male in New Zealand, the trouser stain, one hundred and seventy five million times more likely. The DNA evidence was described in court by experts as extremely strong. It had to be. The Crown had no allegation from Sam and the story he told his mum couldn't be repeated in court because it was hearsay, so they were totally reliant on the forensic evidence. But Neville's defence lawyer questioned the ESR's processing of that evidence after it was discovered an article of clothing unrelated to the case was mixed in with the exhibits. (TO CAM) Enough doubt was raised in the judge’s mind for him throw the case out. But in an unusual move, he called the jury back to explain his reasoning. He said he was concerned about the DNA evidence, that while he was certain “something had occurred...he didn't know what that something was”. Then he told the jury, “there wasn't one fact before them that indicated how the semen came to be on Sam’s trousers”. Then, like the jury, Neville was free to go. LINDA: He let him go, he let him walk. I was devastated, I think the policeman sitting beside me, Gary Lendrum, was also really upset. GARY LENDRUM: It was one of those cases where the law basically got in the way of the truth. It was quite plain to everyone in the courtroom what had happened to that young boy but because of the legal aspects, a lot of the evidence couldn't be given and that is the difficulty in investigating these cases with young children. MIKE (V/O): The judge felt there was insufficient evidence for the jury to make a reasoned decision. But for what its worth, at least one member of the jury had made her mind up. LINDA: I had, afterwards when I was walking out of the court, I had a juror come up to me and throw her arms around me and say how very sorry she was. She said to me, ‘I’m so, so sorry, I’m so, so sorry for what has happened to you and your son.’ And she said to me that the jurors had talked about it through lunch and all thought he was guilty. And he walked out a free man. MIKE (TO CAM): What happened to Linda and Sam shows how hard it is to get a conviction in cases involving young children. Most cases don’t even have strong forensic evidence. So it comes down to the word of an adult versus the word of a fearful, often withdrawn child. LORRAINE JANS: There's no justice at all for these children. And my worry is that because there's no justice for these children the perpetrators just move on. There's no justice for them either. MIKE (V/O): Lorraine Jans has counselled victims of sexual abuse in the Taranaki district for 11 years. She says the courts aren't set up to handle sexual abuse in very young children, says offenders are walking free. LORRAINE JANS: They don't have to answer to what they've done so they just move on to the next one like, well got away with that one. Off I’ll go on to the next one. MIKE: Have you seen that happening? LORRAINE JANS: I have seen it happening and that is what has made me so angry. Somebody has got to speak for the children. MIKE (V/O): Last year in the Taranaki region alone Lorraine and her colleagues saw two hundred and twenty three children, all alleged victims of child abuse. Seventy three of them were pre-schoolers. Not one of those seventy three cases made it to court. LORRAINE JANS: How are you going to put them into that court process? How are you going to keep a child of that age still long enough to give evidence? MIKE (V/O): Lorraine says even when children do speak out their evidence is often viewed as fantasy, unreliable. LORRAINE JANS: I hear people saying, but children lie, children don't know what's the difference between fantasy and reality. If a child has had somebody put their finger in their vagina or put their penis in their anus they know what that’s about. They can tell me how much it hurt. How do you get that from a fantasy, you know the kids don’t lie. MIKE (TO CAM): It is one thing to listen to the frustration of Lorraine Jans about paedophiles walking free on the streets of her town but when you talk to parents of abused children throughout the country, that frustration turns to anger. MOTHER 1: He's just out there doing what he likes. MOTHER 2: They're just easy victims at that age. MOTHER 3: I just had so much anger I wanted to deal with it myself. MOTHER 1: It destroys you for years afterwards. MIKE (V/O): These three mothers say their children were victims of sexual abuse. In each case the child was a pre-schooler. In each case the alleged offender walked free. MOTHER 1: This man is out there with no consequences whatsoever, he hasn't even been contacted, he doesn't even know that my daughter has told us what happened. He thinks he's completely got away with it scott free and he's in a position to go into other people’s houses and reoffend with other people’s children. MIKE (V/O): For all these women the alleged offender is still living in their communities. MOTHER 3: It took me a year to get to the point that if I saw him on the street I wouldn't up and you know, I just had so much anger I wanted to deal with it myself, because the system wouldn't deal with it. And I just wanted to physically hurt him and have him be punished for what he did. MIKE: You talk about these perpetrators walking free. How many are we talking about? LORRAINE JANS: I don't know, I honestly don't know how many we're talking about. I can think of probably 15 to 20 in our area that are walking free. MIKE: Fifteen to twenty? LORRAINE JANS: Fifteen to twenty that repeatedly are abusing children. We know where they are, we watch them move from one home to another home, to another home. We're powerless, absolutely stuck. Our hands are tied behind our back and there's nothing we can do until they go through the court system and are convicted. MIKE (TO CAM): The prosecution in Sam’s case thought it had a good chance of convicting Neville. Remember there was strong forensic evidence linking Neville to the semen stains on Sam’s clothing and body. We wanted to talk to Neville about what appeared to be him getting off on a technicality. He referred us to his lawyer. GRAPHIC (V/O): This case highlights the dangers of relying solely on scientific evidence in criminal cases. Such scientific evidence must be closely scrutinised to avoid the injustice of an innocent man being convicted or a guilty man going free. The trial process has been an ordeal for my client and it has physically taken its toll upon him. He has maintained his innocence from the outset and that stance has been vindicated by trial. MIKE (V/O): Vindicated by trial, and not for the first time. 20/20 discovered Neville has faced charges of sexual abuse before. DAVID: Very devious, conniving, just a straight out creep really. MIKE: What happened to you? DAVID: He sexually abused me when I was 15. MIKE (V/O ): This man, who we'll call David, claims Neville abused him in the mid-eighties. He says he's spent the rest of his life getting over it. DAVID: Alcoholism. Five decent suicide attempts and ending up in HDU which is a high dependency unit. MIKE: You were on a mission? DAVID: Yeah I was on a mission, a mission to destruct. I couldn't handle it anymore. MIKE (V/O): Three years ago he laid charges against Neville. But when his day in court came, his evidence was clouded, confused. DAVID: I had my years wrong. At the time when I made my statement I said I was 14 going on 15, but I was actually 15 going on 16. MIKE: So your evidence wasn't as sound as it possibly should have been? DAVID: No. MIKE (V/O): The jury weren't convinced. They found Neville not guilty. David's still smarting, believes there's been an injustice. DAVID: He got away with it with me. That's twice now, if he’s been chucked out again, that’s twice. How many more times is he going to get away with it? MIKE (V/O): David’s alleged abuse was almost twelve years ago. Sam's less than two. Over the years, Sam’s mother Linda believes Neville has become skilled at targeting children, spotting an opportunity. LINDA: I think he'd lined us up for this to happen. MIKE: The way he befriended you? LINDA: Yeah, the way he'd befriended me and the way it came about. Because I wasn't begging him for an invitation to go up there, he was quite keen on me to go up there and bring the kids. LORRAINE JANS: I want to tell the story of child rape through the eyes of a child... MIKE (V/O): In a week where sexual abuse of children is the focus of a national campaign for rape awareness, it's the safety of pre-school children that has Lorraine Jans most worried. She believes the failure of the system to convict is sending a clear message to paedophiles... target the very young. LORRAINE JANS: It's saying, hey go for it guys, nothing's going to happen to you. You know, nothing, absolutely nothing happens to these guys because of the age of the children. MIKE (V/O): Lorraine Jans wants changes, says our court system must become more child friendly and less intimidating, but still fair. LORRAINE JANS: I’m not saying that we should do it in such a way so the perpetrator doesn't get a fair trial and he's guilty before he goes to court, but we need to give these children a chance to be heard as well. And they're not. MIKE (V/O): Sam hasn't talked about that night, becomes withdrawn whenever his mum tries to raise it. LINDA: He bottled it up. He's really had it inside of him and he's never really talked about it since. I have thought about bringing it up with him but I don't know whether I should or not because it's so traumatic. MIKE (V/O): Linda says it's not just the suffering her own family is going through, she's concerned for the welfare of other families, neighbours. LINDA: He's out there and I’m worried about other kids in the community. Basically he can do what he likes and he thinks he can. He's saying that he's innocent and he's walking away with it. You know, who else is going to be molested, who else is going to be in the same boat that I’m in for the rest of their lives as well. Karen Back Announce: And some promising news for Lorraine Jans; she says in the past few days she's been approached by two prominent judges, who want to arrange a meeting.