The man appeared in court yesterday, where he was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Photo / File
A former preschool owner who sexually abused and filmed multiple children during playdates at his home has been jailed - all thanks to the actions of one brave girl.
The man, who has permanent name suppression to protect the identities of his many victims, was caught after 10 years of offending when his daughter’s best friend, 10, discovered him recording her in the shower.
“I’m glad you told my daughter she smelt and forced her to take a shower that day, because if she didn’t abide by your rules you would have never gone to court,” said the girl’s mother in an emotional victim impact statement she read out in court.
The man appeared in a district court in the lower North Island for sentencing on three charges of indecently assaulting children, multiple charges of making and possessing objectionable material, and seven counts of making an intimate visual recording.
Judge Barbara Morris said there were 18 victims, many of whom were children, some aged as young as 4 or 5. Others included adult women in his family, an ex-nanny, and friends of his older children. He also downloaded child exploitation images.
Victims and parents crowded the courtroom yesterday as the defendant sat in the dock with his head hung low. Twelve victim impact statements were read to the judge, some with tears and tremulous voices.
The mother of the girl who exposed the man’s offending said she was “so proud” of the way her daughter handled the situation.
The man had told her to take a shower because she smelled bad after a netball game. The girl, then about 10, realised the man had set up an iPhone to film her in the bathroom, and deleted the footage before telling her mother.
Several of the victim impact statements yesterday expressed gratitude to the girl for bringing the offending to light.
“There isn’t a day goes by where my mind isn’t full of what [he] has done to my little girl,” her mother said.
Judge Morris said the man used phones and a spy pen to film the children as they showered or used the toilet.
“They trusted you, their parents trusted you, and you breached that trust in an awful way,” she said.
He would instruct the girls to get into different positions, including spreading their legs or buttocks under the guise of checking they had cleaned themselves properly.
“Secretly you would be filming them for your own distorted sexual gratification.”
On some occasions he would also touch the victims’ genitals, pretending to help them wipe or dry themselves.
His footage of the offending included audio of him telling the victims the positions they adopted were “perfection” or “beautiful”.
“All of your offending came to light when [the victim] saw your phone was recording her. She bravely and fortunately disclosed this to her mother,” Judge Morris said.
One couple said their child was autistic and had learning difficulties and severe anxiety.
“Her life is already difficult enough. You saw her vulnerability and targeted her.”
Another parent said her child began bedwetting at the age of eight, and they saw doctors to try to figure out why.
“We now know it was because something was very wrong and was happening to her.
“I would have given my life for this not to have happened to my beautiful girl.”
Other parents said they had worked alongside the defendant for years and trusted him.
They said the images of their daughter that police had shown them in order to identify her in the footage would be ingrained in their minds forever.
Another mother said her life in the area was “tainted”.
“I’ll forever think of [my daughter’s] primary and intermediate years as the years where you violated and stole her innocence. My youngest, my most sensitive, my innocent child. I will never forgive you.”
The man’s ex-wife, who was also filmed multiple times during sex, said she was living in “hell on Earth” and said the man’s actions had upturned the lives of her and her daughter - who he had also filmed.
“When God gave us this beautiful baby daughter . . . little did God know the man he handed that delicate precious baby to.”
In sentencing, Judge Morris noted the man had been abused himself as a teenager and also suffered trauma from his earlier career. He was also an alcoholic.
She adopted a start point of eight years, and allowed discounts for his early guilty plea, the counselling he has done since being charged, and his lack of prior convictions.
She jailed him for four years and three months in prison and noted he would automatically be put onto the child sex offenders register.
The sentence prompted outrage in the back of the court, with one man storming out of the room and yelling “four years is shit”.