UPDATED: NOVEMBER 2015
Dangerous sex offender Dennis John Lyddieth to be released from Perth jail
Updated
A serial sex offender who has spent all but six months out of the past 24 years in jail has had his release from custody approved by a Supreme Court judge in Perth.
Between 1987 and 1991 Dennis John Lyddieth raped and indecently assaulted a string of women at knifepoint after breaking into their homes, mainly in Perth’s inner western suburbs.
He was sentenced to 19 years in jail but was released on parole in 2002.
He was taken back into custody five months later and his parole cancelled, after committing a number of indecent acts in public, including masturbating in public in front of women.
Lyddieth was declared a Dangerous Sex Offender just before he was due to be released in 2012, and since then has been held in custody indefinitely.
Under the Western Australian Dangerous Sexual Offenders Act, people can be held in detention past their custodial sentence if they are deemed a threat to the community.
Lyddieth has been the subject of yearly reviews, and today after the third, Justice Ralph Simmonds ruled that Lyddieth’s could be released on a strict six-year supervision order.
He will be subject to 44 conditions including that he be subject to electronic monitoring, complete a daily diary, not take drugs, report regularly to his supervisors and that he not contact his victims.
A court hearing in 2012 was told Lyddieth had described himself to a psychiatrist as “the nice rapist” and he wanted his victims to like him.
Lyddieth, who is now 64, also has various “chronic medical conditions”.
Lyddieth appeared in court via video link from Karnet prison farm and will not be released from custody until Monday.
He will be living in the Perth suburb of Tuart Hill.
The details of his address, but not the suburb where he would be living, were suppressed by the court.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/25358670/repeat-rapist-fails-to-get-out-of-jail/
Repeat rapist fails to get out of jail
TIM CLARKE
October 27, 2014, 10:48 am
A repeat rapist who claimed he was too old and too ill to attack again has failed in his bid to be released from jail.
Dennis Lyddieth has served nearly 20 years in jail, following terrifying attacks on 13 women in their own homes around Perth between 1987 and 1991, and further sex offences when he was released on parole in 2002.
The judge who originally sent Lyddieth to prison described him as a “a truly dreadful menace to the young women of our community”.
In the Supreme Court today, Justice Ralph Simmonds rejected Lyddieth’s request to be released after a hearing last month was told his heart disease and diabetes, as well his age of 63, all reduced his risk of offending.
Justice Simmonds said he still considered Lyddieth too big a risk of reoffending if released, and ordered that he stay in prison. He is held at Karnet Prison Farm.
At the September hearing, psychiatrist Peter Wynn-Owen said he considered Lyddieth to be a serious risk of attacking again, saying the stresses of looking after himself outside prison could trigger an attack.
And Justice Simmonds – who sparked controversy when he released sex offender Patrick Comeagain earlier this year – was also told that while Lyddieth had made progress in prison, it was still “slight … on a scale of very, very, very small change”.
In 1992, Lyddieth was jailed for 19 years and 1 month for 48 offences including 16 counts of aggravated sexual assault, six counts of sexual assault and nine counts of indecent assault against 13 different women.
Then in 2002, after being paroled, Lyddieth was convicted for a number of indecent acts near beachgoers at Cottesloe and Hillarys.
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