WARNING: This story discusses child sex abuse material and may be distressing for some readers.
A former company director who says he relieved stress during extended overseas business trips by using methamphetamine and viewing child sexual abuse imagery has been allowed to keep his name permanently secret.
The entrepreneur, who has previously launched and led businesses in New Zealand and Asia, was arrested after his bags were searched at Auckland International Airport in October 2024 as he returned home from abroad.
On his phone, authorities initially found a single sexually explicit photo of a child. It prompted a more exhaustive search of all of his devices, during which 190 child sexual exploitation photos or videos were discovered.
Another 14 files contained illegal images or videos depicting rape, bestiality or urination. One video showed a woman bleeding and writhing in pain as a man whipped her with a stick.
During a sentencing hearing earlier this year, defence lawyer Philip Hamlin described his client as a first-time offender who “quite clearly lost control”.
“He brought back images into New Zealand which he ought not to have, and he accepts that,” Hamlin said, describing the defendant as having been “isolated” while staying overseas away from his family.
He turned to drugs and there was a “progressive desensitisation” as the material he viewed got darker and darker, the lawyer said.
“The methamphetamine use took away his moral compass,” he explained, adding: “This is a man who recognises he’s done wrong. He’s trying to put it right - both with his family and his business contacts.”
Hamlin asked Auckland District Court Judge Stephen Bonnar for a non-custodial sentence, as well as a stipulation that the man keep his name - and his various business interests - permanently secret.
Crown prosecutor Joseph Xulue opposed both requests, arguing that prison was needed given the gravity of the offending and the need for deterrence.
He noted that over 40 of the files were classified as Category A, described as the most extreme and offensive. But “what really escalates this offending”, he said, was the fact the businessman helped distribute the material.
In addition to importing objectionable publications into New Zealand, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment, he faced a single count of distributing an objectionable publication, which carries a 14-year maximum sentence.
Court documents show the distribution involved an image of a young boy naked from the waist down that was shared on a social media platform.
Xulue suggested an end sentence of around two years and seven months - perhaps a little less if the judge was to apply a discount for methamphetamine addiction. Judge Bonnar said he was struggling with the link to addiction, noting that most methamphetamine users don’t go on to seek out child sex abuse material.
Hamlin said his client had been “making meaningful progress to date” through private therapy sessions and had been assessed as presenting a low risk of reoffending.
But Judge Bonnar wasn’t ready to take everything the defendant said at face value.
“You denied to the probation officer having any sexual interest in children at all,” he noted. “Inevitably, there always has to be a degree of scepticism about that.
“... The fact that you possessed and distributed such material clearly indicates that you had some interest.”
The judge emphasised that every child depicted in the files is a person “who has been significantly and potentially permanently harmed”, with revictimisation occurring as long as the images continue to be viewed and shared.
He allowed 45% in discounts for the man’s guilty pleas and personal factors, including his remorse, rehabilitation efforts and prior good character, resulting in a provisional sentence of one year and 10 months’ imprisonment.
Because the term was under two years, the judge had the option to swap the sentence for a non-custodial alternative. The Crown opposed but the judge said he was swayed to instead allow 11 months’ home detention because it would allow the defendant to continue his therapy sessions.
He did not order the defendant’s name added to the sex offender registry. Registration would have been required had a prison sentence been imposed but was optional for the judge otherwise.
The defendant was ordered to return to court three weeks later for a permanent name suppression hearing.
His lawyers argued that the suppression request was solely to prevent extreme hardship for the businesses he was associated with and to protect the mental health of his son and wife.
He wasn’t necessarily looking to benefit himself, Hamlin said, to which the judge responded flatly: “Yes, he is.”
The man’s wife, who had wept in the front row of the gallery during the sentencing as the judge read aloud graphic descriptions of the files, was described by the defence lawyer as having suffered depressive episodes in the past.
But the judge said she was “obviously high-functioning”, with an important government job that she was able to keep despite all that had happened. Most of her stress, the judge noted, appeared to be due to what her husband did, not because of potential publication of his name.
“I’m struggling to see how it reaches extreme hardship,” he said.
But Hamlin insisted that both family members’ mental health issues had been “exacerbated by what happened” and would get worse if their family name was associated with the offending.
And the businesses may also suffer financially, Hamlin argued.
The defendant was involved with companies in two Asian countries but resigned as director of two other companies to mitigate potential damage after his arrest. He continued to earn an income as a consultant for one of them, his lawyer noted.
Suppression, the judge pointed out, would potentially circumvent the other countries’ regulatory bodies from conducting fit and proper person tests for those involved in publicly traded businesses.
Future potential harm to the businesses, the judge said, seemed “quite speculative”.
“Aren’t people entitled to know what his reputation is ... if they are to decide if they want to continue doing business with him?” he asked. “There’s a degree of wanting to hide potentially relevant information from business associates or [overseas] government agencies ... I have to say this all seems awfully self-serving to me.”
The Crown pointed out that reputational damage is a natural consequence of such convictions. It didn’t reach the level of extreme hardship, which is necessary for permanent suppression, Xulue argued.
The judge agreed. Even if he had found extreme hardship, he said, he would not have ordered suppression.
“I am firmly of the view that there are strong reasons in support of publication,” he said, pointing to the seriousness of the crime, the need for denunciation and deterrence and the pubic interest - including foreign regulatory agencies.
But that, it turned out, wouldn’t be the final word.
Five months later, with interim suppression still in place, an appeal was heard by Justice Graham Lang in the High Court at Auckland.
By then, the defence strategy had been refocused. The man’s lawyers were no longer arguing extreme hardship to his wife and businesses. It was instead solely about his adult son.
At the earlier District Court hearing, Judge Bonnar had noted that the parents didn’t have the son psychologically assessed specifically regarding the name suppression application because they did not want to cause further stress to him.
There had been an incident of self-harm several weeks after he learned of his father’s charges, but he later told a health professional that he was doing better. The judge noted that he was now medicated, receiving appropriate professional treatment and has strong family support.
The judge said he wasn’t satisfied on the evidence before him “that there is a real and appreciable risk of further significant deterioration in [his] son’s longstanding mental health issues, linked to publicity, beyond the usual feelings of anxiety and despair that any family member inevitably feels when a defendant’s name is published in connection with criminal proceedings”.
“While his parents’ concerns are completely understandable, they cannot be determinative,” Judge Bonnar said, adding that there is no medical evidence that “his son is particularly susceptible to the impacts of publicity”.
By the November appeal hearing, however, the defence had obtained a new report.
While interviewing him, the psychologist who authored the report found the defendant’s son to be “fearful of having to think or talk about his father’s situation and behaviour”, according to Justice Lang.
“He said he does everything in his power to avoid thinking and talking about those issues. He resisted any attempt ... to probe these issues in any depth and was not willing to offer any further comment on name suppression or how publication was likely to affect him.”
The psychologist found that the defendant’s son had recently engaged in suicidal ideation, which she believed was related in part to “high levels of distress about his father’s offending [and] ongoing uncertainty about name suppression”. She opined that the suicide risk would be “significantly elevated in the context of name publication”.
Justice Lang said the report identified risks “that the court cannot afford to take”.
“It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the court to devise a solution to mitigate against this risk because [he] is currently unable to speak about the issues surrounding his father’s offending without becoming deeply distressed,” the judge said in his decision.
“This has now got to the point where he is not prepared to discuss those issues with any other person. This presents an obvious, and insuperable, barrier to any form of treatment or therapy for the issues he is currently confronting.”
Permanent suppression was granted.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.