Family weep in court as girl’s killer paroled after attack on another woman

The family of a teenage girl wept in court as her killer was granted parole for a second time,a decade after he tried to rape another woman at knifepoint on a Sydney street.

But the parole authority insists Terrence John Leary will not be “walking free” and there is no better way to keep the community safe from the “medium-to-high risk” killer.

Leary served 22 years in jail for murdering 17-year-old Vanessa Hoson in 1990. He broke into her family’s Kenthurst house and bashed her to death with a hammer after she refused to have sex with him.

Hoson’s familycampaigned against his planned release into the community in 2012.They begged the State Parole Authority to reconsider,fearing Leary would attack again. Just 10 months after his release,their fear was realised.

Leary,then 46,tried to rape a 30-year-old woman at a bus stop at Hunters Hill,on Sydney’s lower north shore. He had earlier finished a shift at a meat-processing factory,followed the woman,put his arm around her neck and dragged her behind the shelter. He snapped her belt as he pulled her jeans down to her ankles and stabbed her. When she screamed,he told her to be quiet.

The woman offered Leary her phone,bag and money and touched his face in an effort to calm him down,but he bit her finger. A man driving past called police,who Tasered Leary after he punched them.

Leary pleaded guilty to recklessly causing actual bodily harm with intent to have sexual intercourse with the woman while on parole.

Judge Helen Syme,sentencing Leary in 2016,suggested the killer may be beyond treatment through therapy and could always pose a danger to the community. Syme sentenced Leary to a non-parole period of 11 years – that day will come on September 18 this year.

Leary could have remained in prison until 2028 but,after that date,there would be no legal way to supervise him,Justice Geoffrey Bellew,chair of the State Parole Authority,said on Thursday.

“The release of the offender is inevitable,” Bellew said,adding that Leary would be on the strictest conditions. “The alternative is to keep the offender in custody and release him at some later point in time,either with a shorter period of parole supervision,or at the end of his sentence with no period of supervised parole at all.”

Hoson’s family told theHerald they understood the authority’s decision,but believed Leary would reoffend.

“There’s no benefit for us to keep fighting for the community,but we know someone else will go through what we went through,” Hoson’s sister,Fiona Walker,said on Thursday. “For us it’s not an if[Leary’s reoffends] but a when.

“It’s just disappointing that someone who is a medium to high-risk offender will be out there in the community,where he poses a danger to more young girls. “He’d be better off dying in jail and it would solve all the problems,” Walker said.

Leary dialled into the parole hearing from a green-gray room in the minimum security prison,Kirkconnell. For most of the hearing he rustled papers,only his shining bald head and bushy grey eyebrows were visible.

Members of Hoson’s family wept and comforted each other when he appeared on-screen,and again when the details of her death were touched on by the authority.

The authority says Leary will be subjected to 24-hour electronic monitoring and activity schedules and will live in supervised accommodation under curfews.

Justice Bellew on Thursday rejected the suggestion Leary was walking free. “The reality is far from that and the suggestion he will be walking free is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the process,” he said.

Leary’s overall sentence will expire on June 18,2028.

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