Stephen Beattie turned on the video function of his phone and hid it in the girl's bedroom. Stock photo / NZME
This article discusses indecent acts committed on a child and may be distressing to some readers.
An 11-year-old girl foiled a sex offender when she used his phone to send evidence to her mother, who called the police.
Stephen Wayne Beattie, 59, has admitted in the Napier District Court that he touched the girl indecently numerous times over a two-year period, and tried to take intimate videos of her undressing.
Beattie knew the girl’s family and he would visit them.
A Crown summary of facts said that on “multiple occasions” Beattie would hug the girl or pick her up, touching her inappropriately over her clothing as he did so, including on her chest and between her legs.
The girl found the behaviour “pretty weird”, the summary of facts said.
Once, the girl told Beattie not to touch her between the legs. He apologised, said it was an accident and that it would not happen again. But the touching continued.
In June last year, Beattie was looking after the girl at his Napier house when her father was away from home and her mother was at work.
He went into the bedroom the girl was using and put his phone among various other items on the floor.
Beattie turned the phone video recording function on and left the room.
He did this three times, creating three videos of one minute, five minutes and 12 minutes, without the girl in them.
On the fourth attempt, he went out of the room and came back in carrying the girl. He had one hand around her waist and the other between her legs.
He placed her on the bed and offered to help her undress, but she refused.
He told her to undress for a shower before leaving the room, turning the light on as he left. The phone video recorder was still running.
The girl got off the bed and noticed the phone. She picked it up and stopped the recording.
She used the phone to text her mother to say that Beattie had been recording her. She forwarded the video to her mother’s phone and deleted it from Beattie’s.
The mother called the police, who went round to the house and arrested Beattie, the summary of facts said.
When spoken to by officers, Beattie admitted that he tried to record the girl. He said it was a “stupid move” and he regretted it.
He also acknowledged to police that his hand placement when carrying the girl was “very inappropriate”.
Beattie appeared before Judge Bridget Mackintosh via an audio-visual link from prison on Thursday.
He pleaded guilty to five charges of committing an indecent act on a child. Two of those charges were representative, meaning that they covered more than one incident.
He also pleaded guilty to four charges of attempting to make an intimate visual recording.
Beattie was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on July 11.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
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