Secret filming of girl was ‘despicable behaviour’
A judge has rejected a man’s suggestion that he was unaware of acceptable standards of behaviour in New Zealand after he admitted secretly video-taping a 15-year-old girl 35 times.
The man is a migrant to New Zealand, and is now living at a friend’s house because his relationship broke up after the offending against the girl was discovered.
Defence counsel Andrew Riches tried to suggest that the man had not appreciated the seriousness with which the courts viewed this type of offending, but Christchurch District Court Judge Raoul Neave stopped him short.
Judge Neave said the man had been in New Zealand for 12 years, and he did not accept that the man could not have understood.
He told the man: “I would be highly surprised if this conduct would have been tolerated in your own country as well. You had to know this was despicable behaviour.”
The 43-year-old man’s offending was found out when the girl found a key ring camera had been left operating under some plastic on the bathroom window sill.
The girl took the camera to school where she put its memory card into an iPad and found recordings, including some showing her showering, or getting changed in her bedroom. Some of the videos later found on the man’s memory cards focused on her genital and breast area.
The man had pleaded guilty in November to a representative charge of making objectionable publications and was remanded for sentence today.
Judge Neave said the girl had been left “feeling vulnerable and paranoid” which was not surprising but she had a fairly robust attitude and she had not had counselling. “With time and appropriate assistance it may be that no lasting damage has been done.”
He said the man had a good work history and his employer was continuing to support him.
He imposed a sentence of five months’ home detention at an address in Christchurch, with a special condition that he continue treatment.
He also refused name suppression, but said he put the media “on notice” that nothing could be published that would identify the victim. It was clear that publishing the man’s name would identify the victim, so it could not be published, Judge Neave said.
Category: Focus
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