Child-porn hoarder claims innocence in letter

By BRIDGET CARTER

A Remuera businessman convicted of trading child sex abuse images has sent out a letter to friends professing his innocence.

Malcolm Lerner was named this month as the 51-year-old company director fighting for name suppression in the courts to protect rights to a $6 million inheritance.

In a letter obtained by the Herald, he said he had been on "an ill-conceived crusade".

At various times he reported child abuse images to authorities in the US, but "foolishly" kept material on his computer.

In one case, he sent child abuse images to a website, with the intention of reporting that website to the FBI. But he discovered the site was being monitored by US law enforcement authorities.

"What I did was ill conceived, foolish and damaging to all those who had put their love and trust in me," Mr Lerner said.

"I thought I could achieve something positive, but all I have done is cause my family and friends grief, anguish and embarrassment."

Mr Lerner was convicted several months ago in the Auckland District Court of 21 charges connected to possessing and trading computer images of young boys in sexual poses and girls being sexually abused by adult men.

He told the Herald last night that he had written the letter in an attempt to explain his actions.

He said he had a history of going on crusades.

The IT company director said that in one case he spent a "huge" amount of time trying to catch fraudsters from Nigeria who were using stolen forged cheques and credit cards.

His family had been "torn apart" by what had happened, and on Friday he lost his job working for an Australian company.

He hoped the community work sentence he was about to begin would "make everything right".

"I pleaded guilty because regardless of my motives, I felt I had done the wrong thing. I had the images on my computer when I should have just deleted them."

A spokesman for the Department of Internal Affairs, Vince Cholewa, cannot understand why Mr Lerner is making such claims as he pleaded guilty to all charges.

"It doesn't explain why he has a collection of over 800 movies and pictures of child sex abuse," he said.

Mr Lerner was the director of former IT company Network Solutions and is a director of Stodart Holdings and Stodart Developments.

His name was made public this month.

He had earlier asked the district court to grant permanent name suppression. The court heard that Mr Lerner wanted to keep his case secret to retain the right to inherit funds from a trust that could amount to $6 million.

His application failed, but name secrecy continued pending the outcome of his appeal against that decision to the High Court.

In the High Court at Auckland this month, Justice John Priestley accepted that Lerner was no paedophile, but said people like him helped the exploiters of young victims financially and the nature of the offending justified name publication.