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Dilworth School sex offender Ian Wilson will be released in two months
Warning: This article deals with the sexual abuse of Dilworth School students and may be distressing to some people.
A victim of former Dilworth School housemaster Ian Wilson believes the convicted sex offender will continue to be a risk to young boys after he is released from prison in two months.
Wilson, convicted of historical sexual assaults against at least 10 Dilworth students, has been denied parole seven times during five-and-a-half years in prison but is now nearing his statutory release date, which is 22 September.
Wilson has completed treatment with a psychologist while in prison, and has been assessed as having a “below average” risk of reoffending.
But one of his victims, Neil Harding, disagrees with this assessment, saying, “This man is a monster”.
“He is a manipulator, a snake,” Harding said in a submission to the Parole Board this week.
He also said he believed that, given the opportunity, Wilson would “take another boy’s innocence in a heartbeat”.
“Some people have said to me, ‘Why do you keep attending the parole hearings?’ My answer is because I know he is a threat to other little boys.”
Open Justice / NZME / Supplied
The sixth Parole Board hearing report on Wilson, dated August 2025 and which came after the psychologist’s assessment of his risk, said: “In the board’s view, put bluntly, Wilson remains at risk of further offending”.
Wilson, who is now in his mid-70s, worked at Dilworth from February 1971 until his resignation in December 1996.
He was arrested in 2020 as part of Operation Beverly, a long-running investigation into historical sexual abuse by several staff at the Auckland boys-only boarding school.
He was jailed in March 2021 for three years and seven months for indecently assaulting five students between 1975 and 1992 – some of them more than once and over several years.
Open Justice / NZME
Wilson was still in jail when he had one year and 11 months added to his sentence in August 2024 after belatedly admitting to abusing five other boys between 1971 and 1992.
Wilson also has another, earlier conviction related to offending in 1979. In 1997, he was fined $3500 for that offence.
Wilson declined to appear before the board on Thursday, meaning the hearing was cancelled.
Board members again declined his early release after receiving written submissions.
One of those was from Harding, who advocates for other Dilworth victims and provided a copy of his submission to NZME.
RNZ /Jordan Bond
In it, Harding noted that “despite my knowledge of at least two other victims”, Wilson had told the board that it was unlikely that any further victims of his would come forward.
He said that Wilson had lied at his sentencing in March 2021, when he said he had stopped sexually abusing boys after he was married in 1981.
Wilson later pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a boy three times a week from 1988 to 1994.
Harding told NZME that he had been in touch with the Parole Board after it made its decision this week.
He said he had been told that Wilson would be released under standard conditions, which include not associating with anyone under the age of 16 and not making contact with any of his victims.
However, these conditions would last for only six months, Harding said.
“And after six months, their [the Parole Board] influence ends. After six months, he’s free to do what he likes,” he said.
11 former Dilworth staff convicted
Wilson is one of 11 former Dilworth staff members who have been convicted of sexual offending in relation to 50 former pupils, but the extent of abuse at the school was much wider.
An independent inquiry into Dilworth, led by Dame Silvia Cartwright and Frances Joychild KC, said in 2023 it had heard from 126 former students who reported being sexually abused while at the school.
It found their accounts “credible and compelling”.
The inquiry said it was aware of another 49 abused students, bringing the total to 175, but believed that the number of victims was much higher.
The police have estimated there were more than 220 student victims.
Harding put the number at around 300.
The inquiry said the abuse spanned from the 1950s until 2005, peaking in the decades between the 1970s and 1990s.
RNZ
The chief executive of the Parliamentary Service is confident there will be enough room to accommodate the increased number of MPs and their staff coming into Parliament.
On current numbers, up to 131 MPs could be sitting in the Chamber following the election, brought on by a record overhang result.
Clerk of the House of Representatives Dr David Wilson told the Spinoff that currently the debating chamber had enough chairs to seat 124 MPs – including the Speaker of the House – and work was being done to accommodate more by altering the seating arrangement.
In a statement, Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said planning for a larger Parliament had been going for “some time”.
“Now that the election results have confirmed an increase to the number of members we are looking at several options.
“We are confident we will be able to accommodate all members within the Chamber.”
VNP / Phil Smith
Gonzalez-Montero said office accommodation for members and their staff would be “stretched” for a short time, but the new Members’ Building was only a few months away from “practical completion”.
That building – located behind Parliament – was due to be ready to occupy in April next year and had capacity to accommodate around 30 backbench MPs.
“All members should be in fit-for-purpose accommodation from that point,” Gonzalez-Montero said.
Following the 2023 election, 123 MPs sat in the Chamber – a record number at the time. That decreased to 122 following the resignation of National MP Judith Collins.
Collins held the seat of Papakura and stepped down in May and Parliament voted against holding a by-election because it was too close to the election.
The election result also meant high-ranking National Party MPs like Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith, Nicola Willis and Gerry Brownlee – Speaker of the House and an MP for 30 years – would likely not make it back into Parliament.
Only resigning or retiring MPs were permitted to give a valedictory speech meaning none of them would get the chance to give a valedictory statement.
Asked if their would be special allowances for valedictories, Wilson said in a statement that normally only MPs were allowed to speak in the House but the House could suspend its own rules or temporarily alter them.
“It could do so to allow former members to address the House.”
Wilson said no such arrangements could be made until the next Parliament opened and members sworn in.
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