A parole board in the Australian state of New South Wales has just released a murderer to parole knowing full well that the last time he was sprung from prison he tried to kill again.
Terrence John Leary is now outside jail walls and living, under order, at what’s been described as a “corrective services-supported facility.” He is also subject to electronic monitoring.
In 1990, Leary killed teen Vanessa Hoson with a hammer after she rejected his romantic advances. Hoson’s sister, Fiona Walker, pleaded with the parole board to understand that if let out Leary would kill again.
The board already knew this, given that Leary was first released on parole (he didn’t even serve his full sentence for murdering Vanessa Hoson) in 2012. After only 10 months in the real world, Leary attacked a 30-year-old Thai woman at a bus stop (she has not been named). The woman had just wrapped up a babysitting job in North Sydney in June of 2013 and was listening to music while waiting for a city bus.
Leary grabbed her neck and pulled the woman behind the bus stop, punching her in the face and ripping her jeans when he tried to pull them down. He then stabbed the victim in the neck and would likely have killed her if a passer-by hadn’t stopped and called police.
For this, Leary got an additional 15 years for assault and attempted rape. But the parole board apparently feels he was an appropriate candidate for supervised release.
The Hoson family has been campaigning against Leary’s release for years, and Fiona Walker has pointed out what the last judge who sentenced Leary said: that the killer was a “continuing danger” to the public and that there was no realistic hope that he could be rehabilitated.
Adding insult to injury, the state’s parole board put out a statement saying that “supervised parole is conducive to the safety of the community.” The board continued in this vein, saying that Leary had completed a sex offender rehabilitation program, as if this erased the violent criminal’s demonstrated track record of murder and the intent to rape his victims.
