Kiwi sex offender who paid $80 to abuse boy in Manila hotel seeks permanent name suppression

A now jailed Auckland man who was engaged in the online exploitation of children wants his name to stay forever secret.

An Auckland man who paid $80 to sexually abuse a child in a Manila hotel room is attempting to have his identity permanently suppressed.

As part of its ongoing investigation into New Zealanders involved in the international exploitation of children, the Herald published extensive details of the man's offending last month.

His sickening crimes led to a sentence of six years and five months' imprisonment after earlier pleading guilty to 13 charges in the Waitakere District Court.

Despite this, the 32-year-old man made another bid today for permanent name suppression with an appeal in the High Court at Auckland.

Following a short hearing, Justice Matthew Palmer quickly denied the man his desired secrecy after his lawyer had argued the "presumption of open justice should not prevail".

The man, however, has already instructed his lawyers to appeal Justice Palmer's decision to the Court of Appeal if it was unfavourable.

As a result, the Herald cannot report his identity until a further hearing is held.

In April, Justice Christian Whata had already ordered the man's name suppression to lapse on July 18, after temporarily granting it as his mother recovered from bowel cancer surgery.

But he also said "there should be no expectation of any further suppression".

"The public interest in publication of his name is very strong. There should be no expectation of ongoing suppression beyond this timeframe. Indeed, but for the fact [the mother] is in the early stages of her recovery, I would have been disinclined to make a suppression order," Justice Whata ruled.

Court documents released to the Herald showed the man travelled to the Philippines capital in September 2016.

He immediately made his way to a Manila hotel where he would pay someone $80 to film himself sexually abusing a child.

But it was not until July last year that his extensive offending was detected.

It would also later be revealed by New Zealand Customs that the man had more than 14,000 objectionable images on his computers.

Customs was first notified with a report of a New Zealander uploading material depicting child sexual exploitation using an instant messaging app first from the app's Canadian designer.

The company also provided Customs investigators with several IP addresses and the user details of the suspect.

Further inquiries by Customs linked an IP address to a home in Glenfield, which was raided in August last year. They found and seized two of the man's phones, an external hard drive, laptop and tablet.

But it was when a senior Customs officer interviewed the man that a shocking admission was made.

The offender said he had travelled to the Philippines and paid someone $80 for access to a boy for two hours in Manila's Icon Hotel North ESDA.

While there he filmed the boy being sexually abused before later uploading the videos to the dark net for other offenders around the world.

The boy, he confessed to the Customs officer, was about 14 or 15 years old.

Two days after making the videos in Manila the man had returned to New Zealand, his travel records show.

Later analysis of his devices revealed he distributed four of the 10 Manila files on the social media platform WhatsApp in February 2017. He also sent a further four objectionable videos to two users on Twitter.

One of the Twitter users asked the man where the videos were from - the man replied "Philippines".

Further inquiries found the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) received an alert for the man's computer user name from the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in January 2018.

The DIA had also received a warning about the man's email address.

The referral had been initiated by Google after two child exploitation videos uploaded in December 2017 were linked to a New Zealand IP address.

One of the videos, the details of which are too graphic to publish, is understood to be well-known to international law enforcement agencies and shows the abuse of a 16-month-old boy.

The same video was on the Auckland man's laptop, court documents show.

In all, more than 14,000 images and videos deemed to be objectionable were found on the man's devices, with nearly 12,500 depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of children.

Of all the images, 3573 were classed in the highest category of child exploitation material, which includes images depicting sadism and bestiality.

Judge June Jelas told the man at his sentencing: "Simply by viewing the images you created a demand.

"When there is demand there will be supply … It becomes a cycle of abuse," she said.

"You now realise that you have contributed to the continuous abuse of children."

Other Kiwis reported on by the Herald this year who were caught sharing and downloading images of sexually exploited children include a Waiheke Island man and son of a former police officer.

One of New Zealand's worst cases came after US Homeland Security contacted the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand police unit in 2015.

Christchurch man Drew Webb had been linked to a global dark-net paedophile syndicate.

He was later jailed for orchestrating the group and importing and distributing images and films of children, including toddlers and babies, being abused.

Thirty-one children, some as young as 2, were rescued in 2017, the Herald reported.

The massive child-sex network had spread to several countries including Australia, the US, Canada, Scotland and France.

Those arrested overseas included caregivers, parents and a kindergarten teacher, who had traded child abuse images with Webb.