17 Aug 2016

Convicted rapist arrested in Nelson

8:46 pm on 17 August 2016

A convicted rapist who breached his parole conditions and went missing from a Christchurch address has been arrested in Nelson.

Nigel Robert Gately, who has rape and assault convictions, is missing in breach of his parole conditions.

Nigel Robert Gately Photo: Supplied / NZ Police

Police said Nigel Robert Gately, 46, went missing from the address in St Albans yesterday.

They confirmed he was found in Nelson this evening and arrested for breaching his parole conditions.

The Parole Board had commended him just months ago for his progress, saying the board did not need to see him again.

Police earlier warned people in Marlborough to keep an eye out for him, after he was last seen near Kaikoura at 3.30am this morning.

A Parole Board report released to RNZ revealed Gately had been on parole in Christchurch since May 2015, on a sentence of preventive detention.

The sentence was imposed in 2001 for two convictions of assault with intent to commit sexual violation and one conviction of abduction with intent to rape.

Those convictions related to two incidents in Wellington and Dunedin that the sentencing judge described as "terrifying in the extreme" for Gately's victims, the report said.

Both attacks happened within months of Gately's release on parole after serving six years of a sentence for raping a Christchurch woman in 1994.

He completed an adult sexual offender treatment programme in 2013 but the Parole Board still considered him at high risk of sexual re-offending when it released him.

However, that risk could be mitigated with special conditions, the board said.

Those conditions - which were still in place - included being subject to GPS monitoring, living at a specified address and not leaving the Christchurch metropolitan area without prior approval.

The Parole Board was given a progress report in March this year.

That report "provide a good deal of detail about Mr Gately's progress and it says that there is no concern about any increase in risk", the board said.

The board commended Gately.

"He appears to be doing very well."

He will appear at the Nelson District Court tomorrow morning.