Former law firm boss Damian Botherway, pictured in a YouTube interview 13 years, is no longer a practising lawyer. Photo / YouTube
A Waikato law firm boss who had a porn addiction has lost his bid to keep his name secret.
Damian Paul Botherway, of Botherway Legal in Hamilton, continually watched pornography at his office and was deemed wilfully blind to the fact that his employees could see what he was doing.
Staff saw him looking at the material sometimes multiple times a day, with one even suggesting he turn his screen around so it couldn’t be seen by anyone entering the room or the firm’s car park.
Employees complained about his conduct to the New Zealand Law Society, and while Botherway admitted his behaviour was “egregious”, he claimed he didn’t know his employees could see his screen.
In December, the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal suspended Botherway from practising for three months, even though he is no longer practising, censured him, and ordered him to pay two of his victims $5000 each.
His name remained suppressed pending an appeal, but yesterday the Tribunal released its findings naming Botherway, who is also a rugby referee.
In it, tribunal deputy chairman John Adams said Botherway was “anxious about the prospect of publication”.
However, he noted that his “personal embarrassment is not a strongly persuasive factor, but it deserves note”.
Botherway’s behaviour was born from an addiction, while his addictive and dysfunctional behaviour arose from depression.
“Several personal stressors drove his compulsion to view the material at work, and the level of his compulsion explains why he found it difficult to resist relapse, despite having been put on notice by his staff.
“We find that Mr Botherway has striven to rid himself of this dysfunctional compulsion.
“Although it is little comfort to his employees, we accept that he was not in a healthy frame of mind during the period.”
Adams said although publication would identify him, the judgment conveyed balancing context including the mental health driver of his compulsive behaviour, and although it amounted to harassment, it was neither criminal nor assaultive.
He had since undertaken drastic changes at great financial and career costs.
Botherway had also behaved “courteously and sensitively” and offered apologies and contrition, and “appears to have conquered these demons”.
Botherway hadn’t disclosed his current employment, and Adams said the tribunal gained the impression that he might not have told them about his case.
“Likewise, he has not shared his predicament with family members other than his wife.”
However, the tribunal didn’t find that Botherway’s personal interests displaced the public interest in having him named, despite any anxiety he might feel.
Botherway has not returned NZME’s request for comment.
Open Justice previously reported how the man watched pornography at his firm’s office for four years from 2018 until 2022.
A legal secretary who walked in on him viewing the material multiple times a day told the Law Society she was afraid to tell her boss to stop, despite how uncomfortable they made her, because he could be verbally aggressive and condescending.
Another employee said that after viewing her boss watching porn in his office she felt uncomfortable and disgusted, but didn’t complain because she was intimidated by him.
Another female employee, a legal assistant, said she saw him looking at pornographic photos on his computer and was horrified, but assumed it was a one-off occurrence. But then it happened again and again, sometimes multiple times a day, and she began to feel unsafe in the office.
The women then raised what they’d seen with another lawyer at the firm, who confronted the man.
In response, he said he had an addiction and needed to get help, but wouldn’t expose his staff to those images again.
But several months later, staff members began seeing pornographic images on the firm owner’s computer screen again.
One staff member quit, and the man agreed to work from home for a time.
The other lawyer filed a complaint to the New Zealand Law Society about the man’s behaviour, which the man admitted was “egregious”.
He said he was undergoing counselling to help with his addiction.
At the hearing in November, his lawyer, Briar Webster, said he was struggling with active addiction that manifested as watching pornography.
“This was not, and is not, a case of a practitioner watching pornography simply for enjoyment,” she said.
The tribunal suppressed the names of the complainants, along with his other former employees, and members of his family.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.