Martin Henry Lawes, a multi-millionaire, has been jailed for four and-a-half years for paying Fillipino parents to sexually abuse their own children on the internet while he watched the movies and gave directions from the comfort of his home on Auckland's North Shore.
Lawes, 75, admitted charges of dealing with a person under 18 for sexual exploitation and importing and possessing child sex images when he appeared at the High Court in Auckland last month.
Lawes made contact with parents over the internet and directed them to sexually abuse their children. He then paid them for the abuse.
When police raided his North Shore home, they found images and records of the online messages.
In sentencing Lawes, Justice Wylie said it made no difference to the children that they were being sexually abused at the direction of a faceless person in a far-away country - they were still being abused. Lawes' youngest victim was just three-years-old.
Lawes spent more than $100,000 on photos and online sex videos between 2008 and 2017, and he would go on to tell police the money was nothing to him because he was a millionaire.
The vast majority of those were adult live-stream videos but evidence gathered by the police shows Lawes also asked for and paid for videos involving children.
During the live-stream Lawes would direct what he wanted the children to do by typing instructions.
In New Zealand, a Justice of the Peace is effectively a citizen judge, supposedly they are chosen from the role models of society.
view the rest of the comments →
carmencita ago
I hope somehow the police could find the names of those parents and report them to the Philippine PD. There should be some punishment for their heinous actions. Shame.