The man met his victim on an online dating website. Illustration / Paul Slater
The man met his victim on an online dating website. Illustration / Paul Slater
“No one should get away with something like that. He raped me, that’s what it was.”
Those were the words of a now-adult victim, who was just 14 years old when an older man he’d met on an online dating website sexually assaulted him nearly 17 years ago.
The man,who was in his 30s at the time, then paid the teen $1000 not to go to the police about what happened.
Following heavy opposition from NZME and the Crown, the convicted sex offender, who is now in his 50s, lost name suppression in court this morning but his identity cannot be revealed for at least five days as his lawyer said he intends to appeal his conviction.
The suppression order also covers the man’s profession, which is an integral aspect of the offending in terms of his relationship to the victim.
While his victim says he was raped, under New Zealand law a rape charge cannot be laid against someone in the context of anal penetration, like what the victim was subject to. Instead, this kind of sexual violation constitutes unlawful sexual connection.
“You invaded my youth and took away my innocence,” the man’s victim said in a statement read to the court this morning.
“I lost my ability to function in honesty. I lost all trust in people. I struggle with boundaries in all my relationships.”
The victim said that the man broke all boundaries and made him feel as if he were to blame.
“For 17 years I thought I’d never be believed,” he said. “You’ve had 17 years of secrecy and protection about this.”
“You were an adult man preying on young boys.”
The man was sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court on one charge of sexual violation and two charges of sexual conduct with a young person to seven years and two months. He was also added to the child sex offender register.
Judge Stephanie Edwards said that despite the man initially denying he knew who the teen was, there was evidence before the court that it was unlikely he couldn’t have recognised him.
The man was sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court this morning. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
“From when he got into your car you knew exactly who he was and his age,” she said.
“You were 33 at the time of the offending, he was 14.”
Judge Edwards said that the man had denied his offending for nearly 17 years and continued to do so despite being convicted.
“You have been able to progress in your life both professionally and personally. Your victim has not been able to do the same, due in part to the offending on him,” she said.
“You continue to deny the offending and maintain he is lying, and you intend to appeal his convictions.”
The man met his victim on an NZ dating website in 2008. The teenager’s profile was highly sexualised and stated that he was 18 years old. In actuality, he was just 14 years old.
While the man said he didn’t know how old the teen was, there was evidence before the court that he had known the victim for several years.
The pair arranged to meet and the man picked his victim up, then they consumed alcohol and engaged in consensual sexual activity, including mutual oral sex.
However, the man then pushed the boy on to his stomach and forced himself on him despite being told repeatedly to stop.
The teen then demanded $1000 from the man to not go to the police, which he paid, but did not pay a further demand for $20,000.
The man told police that he and the teenager just drove around for a few hours where he offered him support and mentoring, but no sexual contact occurred between them.
While the teen did end up making a complaint to police in 2008, no charges were laid due to a lack of evidence and the man denied any sexual activity had occurred.
But in 2021 police reopened their investigation and contacted the complainant, who stood by his allegations and was willing to be interviewed again.
The man met his 14-year-old victim on the website NZ Dating.
It took another two years before police could sit him down for an evidential interview.
A second set of allegations
By this time they’d laid sexual assault charges against the man stemming from a second complaint, this time from a 17-year-old he’d met on Grindr.
The man pleaded not guilty to both sets of charges against him and went to trial last year, where he was cleared of any wrongdoing against the second teen.
Judge Edwards said there was reasonable doubt in the evidence that the man believed the sexual interaction between them was consensual. He admitted from the outset that the pair had engaged in sexual activity, but that it was consensual.
As such, he was found not guilty of all five charges of sexual offending against the teen.
However, late last year Judge Edwards convicted him of unlawful sexual connection, sexual connection with a young person and indecent assault with regard to the sexual assault of the 14-year-old in 2008.
Judge Edwards said his evidence at trial was “detailed and believable” and he hadn’t exaggerated the details of what happened, nor shied away from the fact he’d blackmailed the man for money in the aftermath.
“I was a very broken, broken child, vulnerable as, and he took advantage of that,” the victim told the court.
He told the court at trial that he’d accepted that no one believed him when he went to the police in 2008 and was surprised when police approached him again nearly 13 years later.
By contrast, Judge Edwards said she found the man’s evidence “inconsistent and implausible”.
“Notably, he said in his 2008 interview that he thought [the boy] might have been under 18 when they were communicating online but he was not 100% sure, which was part of his reason for meeting him. He also said that he was meeting him with what he thought may have been a support-type role in mind,” she said.
The man maintained that the victim had never been to his apartment and they had instead driven around in his car. However, the victim was able to describe the inside of the apartment in detail.
“I consider that [the victim] was, and is, telling the truth about the defendant engaging in sexual activity with him in his apartment when [he] was 14 years old. The man’s denials of any sexual contact with [him] do not leave me unsure.”
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.
