The man continues to have name suppression despite pleading guilty to his crimes. Photo / File
The man continues to have name suppression despite pleading guilty to his crimes. Photo / File
A Canadian company alerted New Zealand authorities last year to an Auckland man uploading objectionable images to the internet but what investigators later found him sharing on the dark web was far more sinister. The Herald continues its investigation into Kiwis guilty of the international exploitation of children.
WARNING: This story contains descriptions and language associated with child sex offending.
Departing on flight PR219 in September 2016 was a young Auckland man - but he wasn't leaving for a holiday or to see family.
Instead he was destined for a specific Manila hotel, where he would pay someone$80 to film himself sexually abusing a child.
It would later be revealed the man, who continues to hold name suppression, had more than 14,000 objectionable images on his computers as he fed the continuous criminal cycle of child exploitation on the dark net.
Yesterday, with his back hunched and a teary stare towards his feet, he was sentenced to six years and five months' imprisonment after earlier pleading guilty to 13 charges in the Waitakere District Court.
But it was in July last year that the man's offending was first detected, the Herald can reveal.
New Zealand Customs first received a report of a New Zealander uploading material depicting child sexual exploitation using an instant messaging app.
The app was designed by the Canadian company Kik Interactive, which then supplied Kiwi authorities with several IP addresses and the user details of the suspect.
The boy, the man told the Customs officer, was believed to be about 14 or 15 years old.
Eighty dollars bought him two hours with the teen in Manila's Icon Hotel North ESDA, where he filmed the boy being sexually abused before later uploading the videos to the dark net for the sick pleasure of others.
After a forensic analysis of the man's smartphone, further inquiries found that the Department of Internal Affairs had received an alert for the user name from the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in January 2018.
The government agency 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 found on the Auckland man's laptop, court documents show.
Two days after making the videos in Manila the man returned to New Zealand.
Later analysis of the man's devices revealed he had distributed four of the 10 Manila files on the social media platform WhatsApp in February 2017.
He would send 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".
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.
He also had three internet accounts with more objectionable images and videos.
Of all the images, 3573 were classed in the highest category of child exploitation material, which includes images depicting sadism and bestiality.
At the sentencing hearing, Crown prosecutor Shai Navot was under no illusions the man was in the business of "trading images on the dark net".
"This is possession for supply, that's an aggravating factor," she said.
Judge June Jelas told the man: "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."
The FBI caught former North Shore community board chairman Martin Lawes paying live child sex shows. Photo / Greg Bowker
Sadly, this case is but one of many.
Just last month the Herald revealed how US authorities found a young Waiheke Island man - the son of a former police officer - sharing and downloading images of sexually exploited children.
In April, Hawke's Bay man James Nielson was jailed after being found in possession of more than 1000 images depicting the sexual exploitation of children and for the abuse of two Kiwi girls.
The multimillionaire paedophile was jailed last September, while the investigation led to the rescue of several exploited children in the Philippines.
US Homeland Security found Christchurch man Drew Webb at the centre of a global child sex network on the dark net. Photo / Facebook
US Homeland Security in 2015 contacted the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand police unit with concerns about a Kiwi link to a global dark-net paedophile syndicate.
Christchurch man Drew Webb was 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 from the massive child-sex network, which 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.
• If you've experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone you can call the confidential Safe to Talk crisis helpline on: 0800 227 233
