According to the summary of facts, Bell placed a hidden camera in the bathroom of a home and captured naked images of people who lived there between 2014 and 2020.
One of his victims was between 11 and 13 years old at the time and Bell had saved a video of her showering to his laptop with her name as the title. Another video of the girl, this time in her late teens, was located in a hidden file and again titled with her name.
Two more of his victims were teenagers whom he also videoed showering and used the footage to turn into 16 still images saved to his computer. A fourth video captured another 19 or 20-year-old girl in the shower.
The images were discovered on Bell’s laptop during an examination of his devices in 2022. Most had been deleted from the camera’s memory card but were recovered by police.
“On a laptop screen at a police station, I watched my greatest fear come to life. It was one thing seeing my teenage body from the perspective of a spy camera but seeing my child body felt different,” Bell’s first victim told the court.
“Let it be known, seeing your body from the perspective of a spy camera is not flattering, and in any way, beneficial for one’s body image.”
The woman told the Whanganui District Court she now checks under her bed to make sure no one has hidden a camera and triple checks that her home’s doors are locked.
She also checks for cameras in bathrooms and holds flashlights up to lightbulbs in her room, convincing herself they’re suspiciously angled to watch her get changed.
“You, Adrien Bell, are a liar and a predator. You robbed me of a safe childhood. You documented my coming of age in the most perverted way I could imagine,” she said.
“You used my young, developing body as a weapon against itself, you locked it away in a vault where you thought no one would ever find it.
“Well now it has been found, and now you can no longer hide.”
By way of explanation, Bell told a probation officer that he used sex as a coping mechanism. He categorised his offending as a mistake, and when he realised what he’d done he deleted the recordings.
“You claim the offending was opportunistic but I reject that. The camera must have been obtained, purchased, deliberately installed and then maintained in position for some period,” Judge Bruce Northwood said in his sentencing.
“You claimed there was no attraction to children but then why record [victim one] when she was as young as she was?” Judge Northwood said.
In sentencing Bell, Judge Northwood said an aggravating factor was how long the camera had been in place. Despite there being only four videos, Bell had taken 56 screenshots which were also saved in his laptop.
“The breach of trust was immense,” Judge Northwood said.
“This has done corrosive harm to these young people.”
A psychologist and a probation officer assessed Bell’s risk of reoffending as low to medium with Judge Northwood noting that his potential for rehabilitation was high, meaning that adding him to the child sex offender register was not necessary.
The fact that Bell avoided a prison sentence and having his name added to the sex offender register infuriated a victim’s mother.
“He purchased a spy camera to watch an 11-year-old girl in the shower. How can that not qualify for him to be put on the register. It’s pathetic,” the woman, who cannot be named due to a suppression order, told NZME.
“It shocks me that the rights of this predator take precedence over his victims.”
Anyone above the age of 18 who has committed a sexual offence against a child will be added to the register if they’re sentenced to a period of imprisonment.
If they’re sentenced to a non-custodial sentence - such as home detention - then registration is at the discretion of the sentencing judge.
The victim’s mother said in her victim impact statement that the first she knew about the offending was when she was called into a police station for an interview early last year.
“At that meeting, I was asked to identify the people in images that were found on your devices. The young girl in the first image was my teenage daughter.
“I cannot explain the anguish, the horror of the realisation that you are a sexual predator,” she said in her statement read in court.
“Your betrayal, your planned and executed abuse of my family has poisoned our memories, our existence, our history. Your sickness, your abuse, has become our legacy.”
Bell had been working from home for the New Zealand Defence Force while he was before the courts.
An NZDF spokesperson said Bell was no longer employed with them but declined comment on whether this was due to his offending.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
