Prominent Northland farmer and anti-Treaty activist Allan Titford has been granted parole on his 10th attempt, after serving almost 13 years behind bars.<\/p>\n
Titford was sentenced to a total of 24 years in prison in 2013 after a jury found him guilty of 39 charges related to raping his wife, violence against his children, perjury, obstructing justice, and burning down his own home – an arson attack he blamed on local M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n
The jury found him not guilty of 14 charges, which included other charges of rape and arson, threatening to kill and assault.<\/p>\n
Titford, who is now in his mid-60s, appeared for the last time before the Parole Board yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n
His release date and location were suppressed but he will be living in a rural area in the North Island.<\/p>\n
He will be prohibited from travelling north of the Brynderwyn Hills, which form the border between Auckland and Northland, and to Pukekohe in South Auckland.<\/p>\n
The four-member panel repeatedly asked Titford if he had committed the offences he was convicted of.<\/p>\n
He was also asked if he had “hurt his children pretty badly”, as they claimed in court in 2013.<\/p>\n
He did not directly deny the offences, but said he would maintain the position he held during the trial “until hell freezes over”.<\/p>\n
He did, however, accept he had been convicted, whether he committed the offences or not.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to accept the situation. I’ve been found guilty of the offending, I’ve got to accept that’s what happened.”<\/p>\n
Asked a second time by Parole Board member Susanna Every-Palmer if he had hurt his children, he again avoided a direct answer.<\/p>\n
“What do you perceive as hurt? Some of them have withdrawn their statements now they are parents themselves. I could say I was hurt by the Catholic school I went to \u2026 You’re asking me to plead guilty, I’m not doing that.”<\/p>\n
He claimed difficulties with his children had been caused by “interference” by their grandparents and teachers.<\/p>\n
Corrections staff were complimentary of Titford’s conduct.<\/p>\n
A prison officer said there had been no misconduct, he “did a really good job” of looking after the prison recycling, got on well with other prisoners and was respectful of staff.<\/p>\n
His case manager said she had accompanied him on a guided release to his future home and a first meeting with his brother since he was locked up.<\/p>\n
Both had gone well, she said.<\/p>\n
Titford himself described prison, in recent years, as “the friendliest environment I’ve ever lived in”.<\/p>\n
Part of that was due to his job, which made him well-known to prisoners and staff alike.<\/p>\n
Board member Gemma Rogers asked him how, once he was released, he would respond to people whose point of view he did not agree with.<\/p>\n
He told her he would now just say, “You’ve got your opinion, I’ve got mine”, and walk away.<\/p>\n
The “intermittently strained” relationship with his brother was due to political issues 40 years ago, he said.<\/p>\n
Once outside he would keep himself busy with court cases he was pursuing against the Far North District Council over rates and land access, against a power company, and trying to recover a seized fishing trawler.<\/p>\n
During the hearing Titford often meandered off topic or failed to answer the questions asked.<\/p>\n
However, he was clear about what he was looking forward to most after his release: Joining language classes and continuing the learning he had started in prison.<\/p>\n
“Learning Spanish is my playground, my party time,” he said.<\/p>\n
As well as exclusion zones, other parole conditions include a curfew, electronic monitoring, and a ban on firearms.<\/p>\n
When sentencing Titford in the Whang\u0101rei District Court 13 years ago, Judge Duncan Harvey said the then 53-year-old had subjected his wife and family to a “reign of terror”.<\/p>\n
After his Maunganui Bluff farm was bought by the Crown in the 1990s to settle a Treaty claim with local iwi Te Roroa, Judge Harvey said Titford tried to win public sympathy by sabotaging his own bulldozer and burning down his own homestead.<\/p>\n
“These incidents received nationwide publicity and, as a result of your actions, the local M\u0101ori people earned the anger of many people in New Zealand who sympathised with you because of what they saw as a grave injustice. It is time for the people of New Zealand to learn the truth,” Judge Harvey said.<\/p>\n
The compulsory purchase of his farm sparked Titford’s 20-year campaign against the Waitangi Tribunal and the Treaty settlements process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prominent Northland farmer and anti-Treaty activist Allan Titford has been granted parole on his 10th attempt, after serving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-546874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546874","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=546874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}