'Highly disturbing' photos taken

Photo / Thinkstock

A "highly disturbing" Hastings man has pleaded guilty to 61 child pornography and sex charges after it was discovered he had more than 700,000 deleted images and video recordings on his computer.

The 48-year-old appeared in Hastings District Court today on 33 counts of making intimate visual recordings, multiple counts of possessing objectionable material, unlawful sexual conduct with a female under 16 and several counts of indecent acts with intent to insult or offend.

The man, who is listed as unemployed, was arrested following an operation from the Department of Internal Affairs and Hawkes Bay police's child protection team.

During a raid on the man's Hastings home on October 3, 2013, Hawke's Bay Police seized his computer equipment and uncovered more than 700,000 deleted images and intimate video recordings.

Hundred of the images were of teenagers the man knew and some had been obtained from social networking sites, while many more were of females taken in public places without the subjects knowledge.

The 48-year-old had personalised many of the images by placing the head of the victims on sexualised internet photos. The guilty man also made numerous recordings of his teenage stepdaughter and her friends.

Police and Internal Affairs uncovered the man made 19 separate covert recordings throughout 2009 and 2010 in the bathroom of his Havelock North home, which he shared with his wife and step-children.

In 2012 he and his family moved to Hastings were he again set up a hidden camera and recorded on 14 occasions his stepdaughter, stepson and two teenage girls in the bathroom.

A series of 20 "highly disturbing" photographs were also taken sometime prior to August 23, 2010 of his then 15-year-old stepdaughter as she slept.

The stepdaughter had been having "trouble sleeping" at the time and the man has given her sleeping tablets for the complaint.

A similar series of photos were taken of his stepdaughter and her friend, who was staying overnight.

The investigation into the Hastings man also found "strikingly similar" photos taken a decade earlier in the late 1990s when the man lived in Auckland.

The man was caught by an undercover operative on an online chat site, where the 48-year-old man expressed in sickening detail his daily routines.

Judge Tony Adeane allowed the man to keep his name suppression while denying media from taking his photo because of the potential harmful impact on his victims.

He was remanded on bail until sentencing at Hastings District Court on October 22.