Paedophile Bowdidge’s school holiday fears: ‘Safer if I stay home’
A convicted child rapist was scared to leave his NSW home during school holidays last July, declaring it was “safer if I stay home”, court documents show.
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A NSW convicted paedophile was scared to go outside during school holidays last July because he was having sexual urges to get “a young girl” and told authorities: “it’s safer if I stay home.”
It’s one of several troubling incidents that drove a judge to place child rapist Brian Alan Bowdidge on a four-year Extended Supervision Order in December, imposing 47 strict conditions on the high risk sex offender while he lives out in the community.
Last year Bowdidge announced he wanted to go back on anti-libidinal medication and see a prostitute after having “unhealthy” sexual thoughts, documents released by the Supreme Court reveal.
A psychiatrist report notes Bowdidge was “triggered by schoolchildren walking past his residence” and in July the intellectually disabled 59-year-old declared he was concerned about leaving the house.
“I won’t be going out much for the next two weeks … it is school holidays”, Bowdidge said, according to Corrective Services notes.
“It’s safer if I stay home.”
As a result of Bowdidge’s tight supervision, adult men and women have now also become his sexual targets under the “any port in a storm” theory, another psychologist report found.
Bowdidge is accused of repeatedly groping a woman at his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, a lawyer for the state government said while arguing for the tough new court orders.
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In 2015 Bowdidge also told a psychologist her breasts were too small for his taste and it would be wrong to masturbate about her later that night, barrister James Emmett said.
Under his new conditions Bowdidge can’t work, travel or change his appearance without approval from authorities who must be notified about his love life and can frisk him or raid his house at any time.
Justice Peter Hamill also banned Bowdidge from going to several spots frequented by children without prior approval and unless accompanied by a chaperone.
The judge said Bowdidge has breached previous orders multiple times since 2011, proving he still poses “an unacceptable risk of committing another serious offence” if not monitored.
Bowdidge didn’t object to an ESO, but in September he became aggressive when discussing the upcoming hearing, throwing his phone at a wall and smashing his tablet, court documents show.
Psychologist Dr Christopher Lennings observed that “it is not clear he has either the awareness or the memory capacity to know and comprehend all of the restrictions he is under.”
Bowdidge was convicted of sexual intercourse with a nine-year-old girl in 1991, saying he attacked the intellectually disabled child “just for something to do.”
In 2001 he raped an eight-year-old girl and was sentenced to a minimum three years in jail.
Bowdidge’s sexual offending stretches back to 1980 when as a 20-year-old he indecently assaulted a five-year-old at a Shoalhaven hospital, telling police he took the girl into a male toilet and molested her because “I just felt like it.”
The Nowra-raised man has very little contact with his two children or his three siblings, and says he was neglected by his alcoholic parents, telling a psychologist his mother once “stabbed him with a gardening tool.”
Bowdidge was most recently released on parole in September 2018 and has been accused of peeping through bathroom windows and other inappropriate behaviour during stints at supported housing and motels in Sydney.
He was staying at a halfway house at Long Bay jail until May before moving into independent accommodation, court documents show.