Woman admits profiting from under-age sex workers

A Christchurch sex show operator has been told she faces a likely jail sentence after admitting two charges of receiving payments from under-age sex workers, who performed sex acts on stage.

"You would be well advised to get your affairs in order," Judge Michael Radford told Anna Anastazja Horlor as he set the date for her sentencing.

Horlor, 59, whose occupation was given as a company director, was due for a jury trial next week but entered surprise guilty pleas at a pre-trial conference session in Christchurch District Court today.

Horlor pleaded guilty to two charges of "receiving a payment or other reward when she knew or ought reasonably to have known that it was derived from commercial sexual services by a person aged under 18".

The court was told at a depositions hearing in July 2008 that the girls, aged 16 and 17, had been at the Atami Bathhouse. One of them was an international student attending high school on a student visa. She had worked at the club for more than a year.

Under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, sex workers have to be aged at least 18.

Crown prosecutor Lisa Preston told the court today the names of the two girls involved were automatically suppressed, but there was no longer suppression of Horlor's name.

Horlor had suppression for much of the time the case was going through the criminal justice system since her arrest in November 2007, but the ban on publication was lifted by a Court of Appeal decision in March.

At that stage she faced six charges under the Prostitution Reform Act of facilitating and deriving benefits from commercial sexual services and two charges under the Crimes Act that she hired or entered into dealings with the girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

Only two charges remained when the indictment was read in court today for Horlor's guilty pleas.

Hamish Evans represented Horlor in court, but he said Judith Ablett-Kerr, QC, would appear for her at the sentencing on September 3.

Judge Radford ordered victim impact statements to be prepared, and Mrs Preston said she would seek leave for the court to be shown a statement from the mother of one of the girls.

At the depositions hearing, a mother told how she had gone to the Atami Bathhouse twice to try to find her 16-year-old daughter when she heard the girl was performing on stage.

She was told by the authorities that girls were allowed to strip from the age of 16, but she told the court she then heard that her daughter was doing more than stripping. "She was not supposed to be doing sexual acts."

The first visit to the parlour was not a success. The manager told her she did not believe the woman's daughter was there and the mother left angrily. She burnt photographs she found in her daughter's room showing her in costumes at the parlour.

She went back two months later and spoke to her daughter while others were on stage.

The mother told of being there for more than two hours while six or seven women performed on stage. They danced and performed sex acts with vibrators and a road cone.

She eventually persuaded her daughter to leave. The teenager then did a training course and after that "she had a bit more pride in herself", the mother told the court.

- NZPA