Darren  Jolly

Background

Background
NZ Herald story here
Taranaki Daily News story 18th December 2004
Fraudster and sexual predator Darren Albert Jolly was sent to jail for seven and a half years yesterday on 33 charges. But the parents of his teenage victims say the sentence is nowhere near long enough. The New Plymouth District Court heard how Jolly enticed the girls – aged 14 and 15 – into threesomes with his partner and promised one he would pay her $2500 to have his baby. The mother of the 14-year-old victim said other young girls were now likely to suffer from Jolly's abuse once he got out from behind bars.

"At least he has got something today," the woman told the Taranaki Daily News yesterday after Jolly was sentenced. "But the bad side of it is that there is now a possibility there will be other victims." The angry father of a second victim said he was annoyed Jolly was able to avoid fronting up to his crimes for so long. The man had been so angry at the impact Jolly had had on his family that when he saw him in a Stratford street recently he punched him. In court yesterday Crown prosecutor Justin Marinovich asked Judge Louis Bidois to put the sentencing into the jurisdiction of the High Court, allowing preventive detention to be considered.

However, while Judge Bidois sentenced Jolly in the district court he did impose a minimum non-parole period, meaning Jolly would have to complete two-thirds of his sentence before he could apply for parole. Mr Marinovich said the community needed to be protected from Jolly. He said the nature of the offending, the number of charges, premeditation, ages of the victims and the fact they were supplied with alcohol were all aggravating factors. "The only way to describe Mr Jolly is that he is a menace to the community."

Jolly had earlier pleaded guilty to 33 charges ranging from having sex with a 14-year-old girl and doing an indecent act with a 15-year-old Stratford girl, to a range of dishonesty charges, shoplifting, receiving, driving offences and fraud.

The fraud charges involved Jolly hiring electronic goods and selling them in garage sales. During yesterday's sentencing the unemployed 39-year-old stood passively in the dock as his long list of offending, past and present, was bared in court. Jolly was supported in court by his partner and his father, who sat in the public gallery, only seats away from his victims. Jolly's lawyer Turitea Bolstad said he had recently taken steps to get counselling to address his behaviour.

She said he and his partner just wanted to get on with their lives. Ms Bolstad tried to tender a letter from Jolly to the judge, who said he wasn't interested in reading Jolly's lies. Judge Bidois said there was a high risk of Jolly reoffending. He said Jolly already had 84 convictions to his name and had been to jail six times before. He handed Jolly down a series of cumulative prison terms, totally 7.5 years – the toughest terms for his sexual offending, 4.5 years in total.

Victim impact statements read in court said the experience had changed the two girls' lives. They felt used, betrayed and scared, their schoolwork had been affected and one said she had suicidal feelings. It is far from his first stint behind bars. In August 2002 Jolly, who ran a freight and furniture removal business in Stratford, was jailed for 22 months on almost two dozen charges.They included 16 counts of credit by fraud, theft and assaulting his intellectually impaired partner when she threatened to slit her wrists. The fraud charges had included leaving motels without paying bills and hiring rental trucks, not returning them on time and often abandoning them near the company's depot.

Adjudged bankrupt in 1995, he has dozens of previous convictions for credit by fraud and obtaining credit while bankrupt. In 1998, in Nelson – where he lived before moving to Taranaki – he was jailed for 2.5 years for indecent assault in an incident where he pretended to be a photographer and took pictures of young girls. He had other indecent assault convictions and had also been convicted of assaulting a child.

He was considered such a threat that a Nelson girls' school once sent home a newsletter with his photograph and a list of convictions to warn students. Over the years he had been on the run from police several times and used false names which have included Peter Darryn White, Barry Waters and Vaughan Isle, along with surnames such as Russell, Fowler, Leckie and Cook.