Jail for filming girls in shower

16 months jail time for man who filmed girls in the shower.

People who secretly film girls in the shower and indecently assaulting them, will go to jail, a judge told a man he sentenced in the Kaitaia District Court.

The man, who cannot be named to protect his victim, was jailed for 16 months, followed by six months' post-release conditions, after admitting three counts of making an intimate visual recording (one of them representative), three of possessing an intimate visual recording (one representative), and one of indecently assaulting a female aged 12-16.

A charge of indecently assaulting a female under 12, which he had denied, was withdrawn when he appeared before Judge Duncan Harvey in the court.

The court heard that the man had set up a hidden camera to film the victim while she was showering. He would later retrieve the camera and view the footage, masturbating as he watched. The summary of facts referred to six occasions on which the camera was used in that way.

He subsequently admitted his actions to the victim, telling her that he had also filmed a school friend, a girl of a similar age, and compared their bodies in conversation with the victim.

Crown prosecutor Bernadette O'Connor told Judge Harvey that the starting point for sentencing should be two and a half years' jail. She strongly opposed the defence argument for home detention.

Defence lawyer John Munro said his client acknowledged his actions had caused hurt and pain for the victim and her family, and that the girl was now "somewhat estranged" from her mother, but he would do whatever he could to rectify the harm he had done, if that was possible.

The indecent assault was at the lower level of offending, while his client had done a great deal of work to rehabilitate himself, efforts that could be wasted if the court imposed a punitive sentence. The defendant had been of good character, and Mr Munro said the community would be comfortable with home detention.

Judge Harvey doubted the depth of the defendant's remorse, however, and told him that he hoped the harm he had done was now absolutely clear to him.

"Your counsel says it will be a tragedy to undo the progress you have made by sending you to jail ... but the real tragedy is that this offending has torn the whanau apart," he said.

Judge Harvey described the statement in the pre-sentence report that the defendant had not known what he was doing was wrong, and did not acknowledge its effect on the victim, as breath-taking and the main source of his remorse seemed to be the effect it had had on his relationships with family and friends.

Technology was making this type of offending easier and easier, he added, and people had to know that if they offended in this way they would go to prison.

The girl told the court the man had torn her family apart.

"I feel I have lost the support of those who should be there for me," she said.

"Some of my family have stopped communicating with me. I have lost my mother, emotionally and physically. I have been traumatised by what he has done to me and my family."