However, the High Court has now set aside the decision on appeal and removed Lee’s name from the register, meaning he is no longer registered as a child sex offender.
Justice Helen Cull was not persuaded that Lee presented a risk to the lives or sexual safety of children generally.
She also reduced his sentence of nine months of home detention by two weeks but kept in place the extension of special conditions for six months beyond the sentence expiry date.
Justice Cull accepted a psychologist’s finding that Lee’s remorse was genuine and he therefore warranted a moderate discount of 5%.
The psychologist’s report also detailed how Lee’s background was linked to his offending, including the abuse he suffered as a teen, which caused “significant trauma”.
Lee had lived a pro-social life and had been in age-appropriate romantic relationships until his offending last year, Justice Cull said.
Lee and the victim had embarked on what was described as a “consensual sexual relationship” for about two months before the teen girl’s parents found out and the police were notified.
After the pair met in 2022 they began communicating, leading to a total of 7093 messages found by police on the victim’s phone, from April 28 until May 26 last year.
Police said Lee was “clearly aware” the victim was school-aged because the word “school” was featured in the messaging 55 times.
This was also evident in messages exchanged between the two on May 1 last year when Lee told the teen he was being threatened with being reported to the police for paedophilia, “Cos I’m dating a minor”.
The chain of events that led to his arrest on May 31 last year began when days earlier the girl sought advice from a school counsellor over concerns about pregnancy. The counsellor then notified her parents, who went to the police.
The girl messaged Lee, saying, “My Dad found out and he wants to go to the police so u better stay away from me and our house”.
Lee did not respond but left Nelson and was caught in the departure lounge at Auckland International Airport as he was about to board a flight to China.
At sentencing, the Crown pointed to the duration and nature of the offending when assessing how genuine Lee’s remorse was, plus his “clear consideration of the illegality of his actions” before continuing them and his attempt to flee the country.
The girl’s parents spoke at sentencing of the “incalculable damage” done to their family by a man who “lulled her into a sexual trap”.
Her father said his daughter’s innocence had been violated and that he struggled with how to solve the problem without pushing his daughter away, who considered [the offender] “the love of her life”.
Justice Cull also set aside the permission granted by the district court to allow media to photograph Lee at sentencing, partly because the court had “overlooked the relevance of photographs in Mr Lee’s previous experiences and the effect of publication on him of a retrospective photo appearing in the media”.
She accepted the submission from Lee’s lawyer that having his photograph published out of context (after sentencing) was a potential trigger for a trauma response considering what he had suffered in the past.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
