By Perry Duffin
Strict controls to keep the state’s high-risk offenders in check after their release from prison have been breached more than 600 times in just five years, and victims’ advocates say the court orders are unable to handle former inmates who are fundamentally broken.
One such unrepentant rapist with a lengthy history of violence will soon walk the streets again with only those court orders to keep him in line despite years spent breaching them.
The state’s most dangerous criminals breached their extended supervision orders 633 times between October 2019 and September 2024.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong
Data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) sourced by the Herald this week shows the state’s most dangerous criminals breached extended supervision orders (ESO) 633 times between October 2019 and September 2024.
A further 150 charges were dismissed by the court because the person on the ESO was deemed mentally unfit, or withdrawn by prosecutors, or dealt with through the drug courts.
Extended supervision orders are considered the toughest suite of restrictions that can be imposed on offenders who are about to be released from prison for sexual, violence or terror-based crimes.
They are used to force ankle monitors, schedules of movements, psychiatric and drug-testing regimes and other forms of control on people released from prison at the end of their sentences.
The State of NSW must ask the Supreme Court to make an ESO and prove the offender poses a significant risk of committing another serious crime.
Rapist Mark Sturgeon, one of those with a history of breaching ESOs, will soon be released under a new control order. Meanwhile, North Shore Rapist Graham James Kay, another repeat breacher, is once more before the courts over an alleged assault on a Sydney schoolgirl.
Victims’ advocate Howard Brown said tougher sentences are needed, not ESOs.
“We keep finding reasons to bring [serious offenders] back to community,” Brown said.
“No one is willing to admit, despite our very best intentions, that good and solid rehabilitation programs only work for 60 per cent of the prison population.
“No one wants to admit we can’t solve all problems.”
Sturgeon, from Newcastle, raped a 15-year-old girl in his car when he was 22. Since his release from jail in 2019, he has waged a campaign of violence against his family and police, despite being subjected to an ESO.
Supreme Court Justice Dina Yehia SC this month concluded a second ESO would be needed to control the high-risk offender after he was jailed for an attack on his former partner.
Sturgeon accounts for a handful of the more than 600 breaches recorded by BOCSAR.
In the lead-up to his 2019 release, and to the growing concern of prison supervisors, Sturgeon refused to participate in the prison drug rehab program and the violent offenders program.
The report on Sturgeon’s time in the prison’s sex offender program cautioned about his “poor perspective”, “sense of entitlement” and raised concerns he was just trying to tick the boxes.
The State of NSW brought an ESO against Sturgeon in early 2019 and asked Justice Peter Garling to keep him locked up for an additional year.
Garling kept Sturgeon in custody for a further two months but ultimately released him with a five-year ESO in July 2019.
Five months after release, Sturgeon threatened and spat at police who were trying to hold him in a hospital, but avoided prison with a community corrections order.
Sturgeon breached his ESO in July 2021, using a secret email to access social media without approval. He was locked up for nine months until October 2021.
He beat up his father in early 2023, but again served a sentence in the community.
In July 2023, he attacked his former girlfriend while inside a car with four children, threatening to “put a hit out to kill her” if she contacted police.
Again, Sturgeon was not sent to prison, but instead given a community sentence.
Two months later, in September 2023, he verbally abused his grandmother while living at her home, smashing the table. While in custody, he punched a corrections officer.
He served five months in prison for the attack on the corrections officer and no time for intimidating his grandmother.
Sturgeon was released early last year and, within a few weeks, slammed his former partner’s fingers into a screen door.
Psychologists are interviewing him ahead of any release from prison this year, to help guide the court on what restrictions might temper his offending.
Similar discussions were had for the North Shore Rapist in preparation for his third ESO in August last year. Psychologists concluded he remained at significant risk of further sexual offending.
Kay was released on his first ESO in 2018, having served two decades in prison for a series of violent rapes in the late 1990s.
He breached that first ESO by kissing a 16-year-old girl and re-enacting his attacks with a sex worker.
He then stalked and attacked a second woman in Sydney’s CBD, while on his second ESO, in 2022.
Kay was imprisoned for less than two years for the second breach and re-released on a third ESO in September 2024.
On Friday evening, he allegedly sexually touched a 16-year-old girl in a chemist in Sydney CBD and is again in custody.
Kay has not been charged with breaching his current ESO.
“If a person is not willing to accept rehabilitation, then the only option is to detain them in the best interests of the public,” Brown said of Kay.
“How the hell do you undo the damage allegedly done to that 16-year-old girl?”
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