Women who blackmailed cheating boyfriend get community work

File photo / Greg Bowker

Two women who discovered they were both in a relationship with the same man and then trashed his house and blackmailed him with an explicit photograph have been sentenced to 350 hours' community work.

Kaycee Wall, 30, of Hamilton and Lani Aperahama, 40, of Auckland, earlier pleaded guilty in the High Court at Auckland to charges of intentional damage and blackmail after discovering the man's dual existence.

Both Wall and Aperahama saw the man for about three years over much of the same period and both believed their relationship was long-term and monogamous.

But a mutual friend informed the women of the duplicity and the two met, it was revealed outside of court.

They went to the man's Rotorua home in November 2009 - saying their intention had been to reclaim their belongings - but became enraged upon entering and ransacked the place. They poured bleach over his clothes, put his shoes in the microwave and turned it on, turned his freezer off, put his clothes into a hot pool and doused his belongings in maple syrup.

Over the next four days the two phoned and texted the man, demanding he pay them $4000. They threatened to distribute a photograph of him with his genitals exposed to his business associates and family, if he did not. He had sent the photo to both women.

Justice Peter Woodhouse said this scheme was probably dreamed up on the spur of the moment but gathered momentum which neither offender pulled back from when they should have.

He sentenced them to 350 hours' community work on both charges, to be served concurrently. Wall was further sentenced to 12 months' supervision.

Justice Woodhouse accepted they had invested a lot of emotional energy into their relationships with the man and that they would have felt a deep sense of betrayal at discovering his infidelity.

The women felt understandably aggrieved as a result of the betrayal, he said.

"I do not consider the harm to the complainant or to his family from this offending will be long term. Any long-term harm will occur from the complainant's conduct, which was morally reprehensible.

"These observations of mine are not to condone your conduct: your conduct cannot be condoned, you have committed crimes."

- NZPA