In the latest case, he was imprisoned for eight months after sending the 14-year-old indecent images.
But he tried to appeal his sentence, all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that being placed on the child sex offender register is a “penal sanction”, which means that any accompanying jail term should be reduced.
He told the courts that the combination of the prison sentence and being on the register meant that the “proportionality” of the overall sentence needed to be considered.
The man also said that being placed on the register for eight years was “disproportionate” to what he said was offending at the lower end of the spectrum.
The High Court and the Court of Appeal have already rejected his arguments.
This week, the Supreme Court found the matter had been “fully argued” in the Court of Appeal, and it rejected the man’s application to hear his appeal.
The Supreme Court did not name the man, because it was making a ruling concerning the register, which is confidential.
It named him only as W, and said the man knew the girl through his workplace.
W connected with his victim on social media and then began to send her inappropriate messages.
After making an inappropriate comment to the girl in late 2022, he sent her several messages, including photographs showing him partially naked and exposing the outline of his genitalia.
Another was of him naked and showing his buttocks.
The Supreme Court said the man accepted that he knew the girl’s age and that the communications were indecent.
In the District Court, the sentencing judge said his offending was “demonstrative of ongoing participation in sexual offending against children”, which involved his grooming of a child.
The judge noted W’s previous conviction following a sexual connection with a girl under the age of 16.
Because the man’s jail term was only eight months, one possible way the sentencing judge could have given him a less restrictive sentence would be to commute it to home detention.
The judge took the view, however, that home detention was not appropriate for W because imprisonment was the only effective deterrent for him.
The Court of Appeal said that, generally speaking, it would be “contrary to Parliament’s clear intention” were registration to result in reduced sentences for child sex offenders in anything other than exceptional cases.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
