A man who abducted a five-year-old girl off the street in Palmerston North and indecently assaulted her in 2016 has yet to begin psychological treatment in prison.
Photo: 123RF
Brendan Paul Henson remains behind bars more than six years after his offending sparked a manhunt and left a city on edge.
He is serving an eight-year sentence for the February 2016 crimes where he snatched a girl on her way to school, drove her out of town and offended against her, before dropping her on the other side of Palmerston North.
Henson, aged in his 50s, was eligible for an early release from prison after serving his minimum term of five years.
The Parole Board declined to release him in March last year. At a further hearing last month Henson did not seek parole.
"As Mr Henson remains an almost untreated prisoner, he has to be considered an undue risk to the community and parole is formally declined," a Parole Board report released to RNZ said.
Henson's most recent parole assessment report said he remained a "significant risk of harm to young girls".
He was okay with attending individual treatment sessions with a psychologist, but did not want to do group work.
This was due to begin in the middle of the year.
Henson's lawyer, Debbie Goodlet, accepted more time was required for Henson to finish treatment and show the board relapse prevention and safety plans, and find somewhere to live for when he is released.
After Henson's arrest it was revealed he had committed similar offending in the early 1990s in Western Australia.
In 2016, two days before he abducted the girl from Shamrock Street in Palmerston North, he indecently assaulted her by touching her leg when he sat next to her at a park.
At his first parole hearing in March 2020, he told the board he had lived a disrupted life.
"I've had so many problems. Even as a child I was moved around the world. I lived in different countries," he said.
"I never got a chance to settle down. I'd make a group of friends and then the next thing I'd move to a different country again. My whole life became disrupted."
Henson, a minimum security inmate at Whanganui Prison, will see the Parole Board again by the end of May next year.
