A man\u00a0with “psychopathic traits”\u00a0who broke into a Dunedin flat and\u00a0raped\u00a0a\u00a0student\u00a0will be subject to a\u00a0rare\u00a0open-ended jail term.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keith Wicks-Cairns, 37, appeared before the High Court at Dunedin this morning\u00a0where he was sentenced to preventive detention\u00a0after pleading guilty to the burglary of the Cosy\u00a0Dell Rd property,\u00a0two counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection\u00a0and rape.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Melanie Harland ruled he would serve seven years three months before seeing the Parole Board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard there was\u00a0a very high\u00a0risk of future serious\u00a0crimes\u00a0and the defendant exhibited psychopathic traits when\u00a0assessed by clinicians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The judge\u00a0noted Wicks-Cairns had\u00a0previous\u00a0convictions for sex offences\u00a0and said there was “a clear pattern of serious offending which has escalated in seriousness”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said there was no evidence to persuade her\u00a0the defendant\u2019s risk level would have decreased by the end of a finite sentence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You show little insight into your offending,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The case was not\u00a0finely balanced, Justice\u00a0Harland told the packed court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim of the sex attack told the court\u00a0in\u00a0a\u00a0statement today that she had lived in “constant fear” for the last 13 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Some days I barely\u00a0recognise\u00a0myself,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I check the doors and windows over and over because I\u2019m\u00a0scared\u00a0I missed something.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The young woman said she had worked hard to\u00a0establish\u00a0her independence but that now felt like a risk\u00a0rather than an acheivement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s frightening to feel like my future, something I was working so hard for, has been destroyed by someone else\u2019s actions,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wicks-Cairns was driving\u00a0around North Dunedin\u2019s student sector\u00a0in the early hours of\u00a0February\u00a04\u00a0last year.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
He parked in Queen\u00a0St\u00a0and CCTV captured him walking towards\u00a0Cosy\u00a0Dell Rd, wearing a beanie, dark\u00a0clothing\u00a0and red shoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He pulled the hat over his face to conceal his identity as he approached the victim\u2019s home, court documents said.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Once inside, Wicks-Cairns made his way to the top floor where the woman was sleeping and immediately\u00a0covered her mouth with his hand, forcing her head into a pillow.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
He repeatedly asked: “are you going to be quiet?”\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman screamed and\u00a0kicked out, prompting Wicks-Cairns to restrain her by the wrists, his knee against her lower back.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
“No one is going to hear you,” Wicks-Cairns said. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defendant then violated the woman despite her protestations, telling her to “enjoy it”.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
“She lay on the bed with her eyes closed wanting and waiting for what was happening to be over,” the court heard. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once the attack\u00a0ended, Wicks-Cairns led the victim to the flat\u2019s\u00a0kitchen and made her wash her hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Harland said there were multiple points where the man could have ceased the attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wicks-Cairns, though, told one clinician his thought process was: “f… it, I\u2019m already f….. up. It can\u2019t get any worse\u00a0. . . I\u2019ve already broken into a house and reached the point of no return.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
When they got back\u00a0to the bedroom,\u00a0he\u00a0warned her if she told anyone what had\u00a0happened,\u00a0he would be back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twenty\u00a0minutes after arriving, Wicks-Cairns was again caught on CCTV running from the address, carrying the\u00a0victim\u2019s\u00a0bedsheet.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2013, Wicks-Cairns was jailed for four years 10 months when he appeared at the Invercargill District Court for sex crimes against two pre-teen girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Richard Smith\u00a0noted the second attack came three weeks after being scolded by the first victim\u2019s mother, who had\u00a0informed\u00a0him\u00a0she was going to police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Strikingly”,\u00a0Mr\u00a0Smith said, those\u00a0sexual assaults\u00a0also began on\u00a0sleeping victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wicks-Cairns admitted recently that he had “groomed” the girls\u2019 mothers to get access to the kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Preventive detention was essential for community protection, Mr Smith argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a letter to the court,\u00a0the defendant\u00a0said he was now ready to undertake\u00a0rehabilitation\u00a0but the prosecution stressed he had twice previously failed to take advantage of such\u00a0assistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I know prison is where I deserve to be until\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0dealt with the demons inside . . .\u00a0I’m\u00a0right where I need to be to ensure the safety of others,” Wicks-Cairns wrote\u00a0in a letter to the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Counsel Joshua Grainger said the defendant\u2019s\u00a0wishes to\u00a0change were genuine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wicks-Cairns was not “beyond rehabilitation”,\u00a0he argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr\u00a0Grainger stressed his client had never had a preventive-detention warning and the seriousness of his current situation had been “a wake-up call”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Harland acknowledged Wicks-Cairns’ extremely dysfunctional childhood which included stays in state care,\u00a0the use of\u00a0alcohol and drugs at 12, and leaving school at 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the defendant had not taken\u00a0advantage of the extensive efforts made to alter his course.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim said some days she felt as though she was recovering from the ordeal but other days the fear was stronger than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regardless, she\u00a0remained\u00a0determine\u00a0to rebuild herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want the defendant to know, I won\u2019t let his cowardly actions dictate my life,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man\u00a0with “psychopathic traits”\u00a0who broke into a Dunedin flat and\u00a0raped\u00a0a\u00a0student\u00a0will be subject to a\u00a0rare\u00a0open-ended jail term.\u00a0 Keith Wicks-Cairns,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-322843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}