Contact with children breach means prison

The defendant accepted the sentence had to be imprisonment.

''It's what he got last time'', public defender Campbell Savage submitted when John William Edge (49) appeared on his sixth conviction for breaching his extended supervision.

Edge was before the Dunedin District Court yesterday having admitted breaching his extended supervision by failing to comply with a written non-association order, on January 31 this year. Judge John Macdonald sentenced him to six months' jail.

Edge was made subject to a seven-and-a-half-year extended supervision order in September 2010. The order followed a two-year prison term received in December 2009 on three convictions for indecently assaulting a female aged under 12.

In September last year, he was sentenced to 11 months' imprisonment for breaching his extended supervision by doing voluntary work he knew was unsuitable, on July 12; and by associating with children aged under 16 without a supervisor or any written approval from probation, on July 17.

Those charges were laid after Community Corrections had learned, on July 12, that Edge had been in contact with young children. He had been working voluntarily at The Children's Charity Barn and worked there on July 17 although directed not to because there were children involved.

On January 4 this year, Edge was issued with a directive not to associate with The Children's Charity Barn as it was considered contact with the organisation would increase his likelihood of contact with children aged under 16.

On January 31, his probation officer was informed he had entered the premises and a staff member had told him to leave. Mr Savage told the court Edge had ''fairly deep-set issues that cause him to behave the way he does''. Edge said he had reached the point where he was prepared to have help. Imposing imprisonment, the judge told Edge: ''Why you defied the directive is beyond me''.

The prison term had no release conditions, the judge said. Edge remained under extended supervision and would be subject to the order for some years yet.