Michael Morrison was sentenced for taking covert videos of young girls at a Newmarket mall. Photo / NZME
A man has been jailed for taking “upskirt” videos of unsuspecting young women and girls at a shopping mall.
Michael Gary Morrison, 58, used a toy helicopter box with a hidden camera to film up the skirts and dresses of nearly two dozen victims as young as 10 years old.
Many of them did not know until police called them months later.
“I blamed myself. Did I do something to provoke this man?” one victim said just before Morrison was sentenced at the Auckland District Court on Friday afternoon.
“Almost two years later I’m still trying to deal with what happened. I feel like I can’t wear skirts in public and I avoid escalators at all cost,” she said.
“My granddaughter was 10 years old at the time and oblivious to it,” said a grandmother of a victim.
“We decided not to tell her.”
The father of another victim, then 12, said he saw Morrison “angle the box directly up my daughter’s skirt”.
The court heard Morrison built a device specifically to take covert videos, using a boxed remote control helicopter.
He fashioned handles for the device that allowed it to hang close to the ground, where it could film under his victims’ clothing.
Over six days in March 2021, he went to Westfield Newmarket mall, scouted for victims, and positioned himself behind them - on the escalator, waiting in line at a store, or at traffic crossings - and filmed.
His victims were 22 girls aged between 10 and 18, several of them in school uniform.
All of this was captured on CCTV. On the sixth day, he was caught.
In court, he read out a short letter saying he has not stopped thinking about how he could have done “such a thing”.
“There are no excuses for what I did, and for that I’m so sorry for any harm I’ve caused the victims,” he said, his hands shaking.
“In a way I was glad I was caught. Arrest was a wake-up call for me to change and be a better person.”
His lawyer Ashleigh Millington said Morrison has been getting regular treatment for his alcohol addiction.
“Yours was highly predatory offending, including against children,” Judge Evangelos Thomas said, sentencing Morrison to 12 months in jail.
The sentence of under 24 months would normally allow for home detention to be considered, which the judge declined, pointing to an elevated need for denunciation in this case.
Many would expect to see sexual predators go to jail, the judge said.
“People need to trust that our public places are safe, their children’s innocence not compromised. Girls, women, everybody, need to be able to trust others to act properly. You have grossly breached that trust.”
He said it was not the filming that causes the harm, but the betrayal.
“Once you realise you can’t go to the shopping mall without being seen and treated as a sex object...how can you trust anyone after that?” the judge said.
Morrison was also subject to special release conditions where he is not to own any cameras, and his other devices will be inspected.
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.