Kelvin Martin, photographed in 2007, was a political candidate and community activist prior to his convictions related to child sexual abuse charges. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
A former political candidate recently ordered to serve a rare indefinite prison sentence for repeated convictions related to child sexual abuse can now be named, after abandoning what he acknowledged all along was a hopeless bid for permanent name suppression.
Kelvin Andrew Martin, 65, was appointed in 2003 to the Te Atatū Marae Development Board but later ran unsuccessfully as a Māori Party candidate and also launched an unsuccessful bid for Waitākere City Council.
His political ambitions hit a major roadblock in December 2007 when he was arrested at a Sandringham park, as part of a bust in which police accused him of trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex following discussions in an Internet chat room.
Matters worsened for him when, in the course of that investigation, police found child exploitation material in his home and a victim came forward who said she was abused by Martin when she was 6 years old.
He was arrested again in December 2023, accused of sexually abusing two other young girls, but could not be named for two years – at first for fair trial reasons, given the high-profile nature of his previous case.
But after fair trial-related suppression lapsed following his guilty plea last year, he instead requested permanent name suppression.
When that bid failed, he announced an intention to stall the process further by taking his suppression fight to the Court of Appeal.
“[The defendant] says frankly in his affidavit that he has been advised there is little merit in advancing an application for permanent name suppression but that he wishes to proceed with the application and to appeal [anyway],” High Court Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith noted in a decision in October rejecting permanent suppression.
Martin had argued that revealing his legal status as a convicted paedophile would jeopardise his safety in prison – especially while on remand in Auckland.
He maintained his intention to appeal following his sentencing in November to preventive detention – a sentence without an end date reserved only for offenders deemed to pose a significant, ongoing risk to the public.
The suppression appeal had been scheduled to be heard in February, but Martin informed his lawyers just before Christmas that he no longer wished to pursue it.
This is the first time his name has been published in relation to the latest charges.
“The day my daughters told me what had happened changed everything,” the mother of his latest victims said in an anguished statement as she confronted him at his sentencing in late November.
The girls he abused were 3 and 5 years old when they first met the defendant, young enough that they trusted every adult around them, their mother said.
“One daughter spoke as if it was normal, not even understanding that what happened to her was wrong,” she recalled.
“My other daughter cried and struggled to get the words out.
“Hearing them say those things shattered me. I found myself asking questions that no parent should ever have to ask. I tried to hold back my tears, but it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I felt helpless.
“He caused harm that will follow them for the rest of their lives. He changed their childhood forever.”
According to the explicit summary of facts that Martin agreed to, he on more than one occasion locked the youngest child in a room and sexually abused her.
The older child was targeted one time, having told the defendant to stop when he groped her from behind.
“Your offending included significant elements of degradation and cruelty in isolating the younger girl and directing her actions,” Justice Pheroze Jagose told Martin.
Court documents state Martin’s sexual crimes date back almost 25 years, even though convictions for the earliest offences wouldn’t occur until years later.
He was sentenced to nine months’ home detention in May 2009 after pleading guilty to possessing child sexual exploitation videos and images between 2002 and 2004, and for trying to meet a 14-year-old girl at the park in 2007.
The girl had been “pursued at length” in explicit online chats, but it was actually an undercover account run by police.
“You’ll learn more with me than attending school,” he allegedly wrote as he tried to convince the child to accompany him to Whangārei.
Then-National MP Tau Henare, who had served on the Māori community board with Martin, told the Herald in 2008 that he was “gobsmacked” when informed of those charges following six months of suppression.
In 2009, Martin was also found guilty at trial of abusing a 6-year-old girl whom he was supposed to be caring for several years earlier while her parents were on an overseas trip.
For those convictions, a judge sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment.
“You denied your 2006 offending at sentencing, which the judge then recorded was ‘a cause for continuing concern’,” Justice Jagose noted at the most recent sentencing.
“Instead, you presented as ‘a normal family man, [then] married for 27 years with children and grandchildren’, ‘willingly undergoing counselling for … addiction’ to child sexual exploitation materials."
Under normal circumstances, Martin would have faced up to 20 years’ imprisonment at his latest sentencing hearing.
But Crown prosecutor Matthew Nathan instead asked for preventive detention, citing a need to protect the community after previous sentences failed to deter him.
Inmates serving such a sentence are released only after the Parole Board determines the risk has been reduced. Even if they do manage to convince the Parole Board of their reform, they are managed by Corrections for the rest of their life – much like murder convicts – and can be recalled to prison at any time.
Martin’s lawyer, Philip Hamlin, tried to persuade the judge against such an outcome.
It was a change in roles for Hamlin, who in 2009 was a Crown prosecutor who successfully lobbied a District Court judge to impose Martin’s first prison sentence.
“He wants to make himself better,” Hamlin recently told Justice Jagose. “He didn’t want to be here again. He’s embarrassed.”
A normal sentence, Justice Jagose later noted, could have resulted in Martin being returned to the community on parole by later this year.
He agreed with the Crown that past sentencing approaches hadn’t worked.
He noted that separate psychological reports found the defendant to be an above-average risk of committing similar offences in future.
“They are saying your predilection to reoffend will overwhelm measures established to deter you from that,” the judge said.
“Unless rehabilitated in custody, I am satisfied you are likely to reoffend if released on expiry of a determinate sentence,” he added.
“The pattern of your serious offending is to target girls in their childhood and early adolescence. As the judicial decisions on your previous convictions and the girls’ mother’s statement in this proceeding illustrate, your offending has caused serious harm to the community.”
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.
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