From 3 News:

Corrections Dept under attack as prison rapist is sentenced

The Corrections Department has come under attack for placing a teenage white supremacist in the same cell as a hardened Maori gang member.

The result was that the teenager was repeatedly raped.

Dean Noble remained defiant as he was sentenced for the raping and bashing the teen today.

Flanked by prison guards, he called out ‘I’m innocent!’ during the sentencing. He also had to be ordered to take off his hat.

The sentencing focussed on whether or not Noble should get New Zealand’s toughest penalty - preventative detention.

Crown Prosecutor Pip Currie called for it, saying Noble had more than 60 convictions and was already in jail for assault and kidnapping when he attacked his cellmate at Christchurch prison.

Currie said: “(The attacks) included violence and there were threats made during the rapes. Indeed, during one of them the victim was rendered unconscious.”

Noble claimed through his lawyer that the victim was a liar. The sentencing judge ignored that and said he had agonised over the appropriate sentence. Justice Chisholm told Noble to consider himself lucky for getting an 11 year sentence instead of preventative detention.

The raped teenager was himself in prison for assault, kidnapping, and sex with a minor, but prison activists say the pair should never have been in the same cell.

“We are totally opposed to any idea of putting a teenager in with a seasoned prisoner - that should never happen,” says Kathy Dunstall of the Howard League for Prison Reform.

The Corrections Department says cell pair-ups are considered carefully. They also said that inmates are checked every two hours and have an intercom and buzzer if they need help.

“In the case of the prisoner Noble and the complainant there was absolutely no knowledge that the doubling up would be inappropriate,” says Christchurch Prison Manager John Roper.

Noble will now be in jail until at least 2015, and this time he will be in a single cell.