Police email snares Net child-sex addict

It started with his growing addiction to child sex on the Internet - and ended when he took a bag of condoms and lubricant to a police trap at public toilets.

Tudor Trevor Owen, aged 51, was handed a suspended six-month prison sentence, six months' periodic detention and $750 in fines yesterday after he admitted making, supplying and possessing objectionable publications, and preparing to commit a crime.

Police said Owen posted Internet ads early last year in which he called himself a "loving, caring teacher" offering masturbation and oral-sex tuition to "first-timers and beginners."

They alleged he was trying to recruit teenage boys for a prostitution ring aimed at gay men and middle-aged women.

Police went onto the Internet posing as a 13-year-old boy called James and lured Owen by email to a Greenlane restaurant.

They tailed the reclusive paint-mixer from his Panmure home and arrested him emerging from public toilets on Green Lane West.

In his car they found pornographic magazines and a bag containing condoms, a towel and a jar of Vaseline.

Owen's lawyer, David McNaughton, told the Auckland District Court that his client lived alone with no social life, and had experienced no "significant" sexual relationship since coming to New Zealand 30 years ago.

Mr McNaughton said Owen lost thousands of dollars in a pyramid scheme and was struggling to pay a mortgage when he bought a computer to write manuals for money.

Owen became addicted to the Internet after a friend showed him in October 1998 how to access it.

Within four months he slipped from being a casual browser to having a "deviant side" involving bids to contact men and boys.

"He spent virtually every waking hour on the Net," Mr McNaughton said. "It took over his whole life."

Mr McNaughton said Owen sent emails to the "boy" in which he tried to cancel the meeting, but went along after receiving no reply. The items had been in his bag for some time, and were not taken along especially for the meeting.

Judge Joe Anderson said the public condemned deviant behaviour such as Owen's.

"There are no words of mine that can add to the emphasis of disgust."