Edward William Latimer has spent most of his adult life in prison for offences including sexual assaults and wilful exposure

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A dangerous sex offender has been granted freedom from a West Australian prison and will be able to visit sex workers in a bid to reduce his risk of reoffending.

Edward William Latimer, 61, has a criminal record dating back to his teenage years and has spent most of his adult life in prison for offences including sexual assaults and wilful exposure.

For the second time in 11 years, the indefinitely imprisoned Latimer was granted release from jail, this time under a 10-year supervision order with 52 conditions including a curfew, no alcohol or porn, and no access to sex workers without approval.

WA supreme court justice Anthony Derrick said in his decision handed down on Tuesday that while Latimer remained a serious danger to the community, the risk could be managed in the community.

“There are adequate safeguards contained in the supervision order conditions to ensure that if the respondent begins to regress this will be quickly noticed by those responsible for his supervision and ... he will [be] brought back before the court,” he said.

“Access to sex workers will not of itself resolve the issue of the respondent’s ability to manage his sexual urges ... [but] the option for the respondent to engage in regular, albeit infrequent, sexual contact should serve as an additional protective factor.”

In 2005, Latimer was sentenced to almost three years in prison for trying to rape a drunk man who had fallen asleep in a park.

Latimer was placed under a continuing detention order the following year until he was finally released in 2014 on a five-year supervision order.

The next year, a judge found Latimer twice breached a condition of the order by sexually propositioning women he did not know, so he was again placed under a continuing detention order until now.

Latimer still refused to accept he was a sex offender but Derrick said if he did reoffend it would likely be a non-contact crime rather than a serious sexual attack.

He said Latimer had made enough progress to be monitored in the community and had become receptive to psychological treatment.

“He is now able to identify some of the triggers for his offending, most specifically boredom, loneliness and talking to women that he does not know,” Derrick said. “He has increased his understanding of the risk situations that he will need to avoid.

“He has gained a rudimentary understanding of the concept of consent.”