honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Prison term sought for Hawaii sex offender


By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Convicted sex offender Harrison Mew is back in custody and prosecutors want to revoke his probation and send him to prison.

In August, Mew, 57, was sent to jail for 60 days after he was found using a phony name to advertise on Craigslist for female roommates in a Kaneohe “executive mansion.”
After he was released, Mew did not report his whereabouts to authorities and recently showed deception when polygraphed “about where he’s been sleeping” and about “his financial situation,” Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Puçu said in court today.
She asked Circuit Judge Steven Alm to revoke Mew’s probation.
“This is a dangerous man who continues to do whatever he wants to do out in the community,” Puçu said.
Mew’s defense lawyer, Raymond Fukuhara, asked for more time to respond to the charges. Alm set another hearing for Jan. 11.
Mew was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the 1980s after his conviction for a series of burglaries in the Kahala area that led to him being known as the "Kahala Panty Burglar."
Those crimes began as low-level thefts but increased in seriousness to break-ins, stalkings and disturbing phone calls to female victims, according to prosecutors.
After serving a prison and parole term, Mew was indicted in 1999 on new sex charges. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree sexual assault after police discovered a videotape showing Mew and a co-defendant assaulting a 19-year-old woman who was too drunk to stand without help.
That crime occurred in Mew's Pearl City auto air-conditioning repair shop.
In 2007, he was sentenced to a new five-year probation term for failure to fully comply with Hawai'i's sex offender registration laws.
Police confiscated a large cache of pornography from Mew's home and office, according to court records in the 2007 case.