R v Paraire
[2025] NZHC 1961
•16 July 2025
PUBLICATION OF NAMES, ADDRESSES, OCCUPATIONS OR IDENTIFYING PARTICULARS OF COMPLAINANTS PROHIBITED BY S 203 OF THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ACT 2011. PUBLICATION OF NAMES, ADDRESSES, OCCUPATIONS OR IDENTIFYING PARTICULARS OF ANY PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF
18 YEARS WHO IS A COMPLAINANT OR WHO APPEARED AS A WITNESS PROHIBITED BY S 204 OF THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ACT 2011.
IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND AUCKLAND REGISTRY
I TE KŌTI MATUA O AOTEAROA TĀMAKI MAKAURAU ROHE
CRI-2024-085-000189
[2025] NZHC 1961
THE KING v
WIPARERA PARAIRE
Hearing: 16 July 2025 Appearances:
H D L Steele and S Meyerhoff for Crown
R B C Ismail and L B Tomlinson for Defendant
Judgment:
16 July 2025
SENTENCING NOTES OF VAN BOHEMEN J
Counsel/Solicitors:
Crown Solicitor, Auckland Keam Law, Auckland
R v WIPARERA PARAIRE [2025] NZHC 1961 [16 July 2025]
[1] Wiparera Paraire, you appear for sentence having pleaded guilty to the following four charges:
(a)dealing in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation;1
(b)agreeing to deal in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation;2
(c)knowingly making an objectionable publication;3 and
(d)sexual conduct with a young person under 16.4
[2] The first two charges are representative charges. The first three charges each carry maximum penalties of 14 years’ imprisonment. The fourth charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. The charges all relate to your conduct with a young person who was 14 years’ old when most of the alleged offending occurred. Because of her age and vulnerability, I will not use the young person’s name but shall refer to her principally as the victim.
[3] We have heard the victim impact statement of the mother of that young person. I pay tribute to her courage in telling the Court how your offending has affected her daughter, herself and her family.
[4]Mr Paraire, this is the process I will follow:
(a)First, I will outline the circumstances of your offending.
(b)Secondly, I will consider your relevant personal circumstances as they have been put before the Court.
(c)Thirdly, I will explain the approach to setting the sentence and discuss the requirements of the Sentencing Act 2002 as they apply in this case
1 Crimes Act 1961 s 98AA(1)(a)(i); maximum penalty 14 years’ imprisonment.
2 Crimes Act, s 98AA(1)(i); maximum penalty 14 years’ imprisonment.
3 Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993, s 124; maximum penalty 14 years’ imprisonment.
4 Crimes Act, s 134(1); maximum penalty 10 years’ imprisonment.
and in accordance with decisions of the Court of Appeal and High Court.
(d)Finally, I will determine and impose the sentence I consider appropriate and make any appropriate orders.
[5] This process will take some time because, as has become apparent, there is a difference in the sentencing approaches and end sentences advocated by Crown counsel and your counsel.
The offending
[6] The following account of the offending draws on the summary of facts which was the basis of your guilty pleas. I am setting out only a brief synopsis of the summary of facts, the full version of which is available to the media.
[7] From 1 April 2023 to 24 January 2024, you were in a relationship with the victim. The relationship spanned almost 10 months, even though the police told you two months into that period that the victim was only 14 years’ old.
[8] During the relationship, you encouraged the victim to prostitute herself, found work for her and, on several occasions, encouraged her to find more work and to perform specific sex acts on individuals. Examples in the summary of facts include you sending text and Snapchat messages asking the victim where she was because you had work for her, encouraging her to flirt with men she was with, with the aim of securing future work and to look for opportunities, including through sexual acts, to distract the men so she could steal from them.
[9] When the victim told you by Snapchat that she would recruit friends, also under the age of 16, to prostitute themselves, you replied that, once the others were all in good positions, they would be under her and would report back to you. You also discussed meeting with one of the friends to enlist her to work for you. The victim sent you a full-body nude photograph of that friend. Later, you contacted the friend directly and offered to perform sex acts on her.
[10] Those are the essential facts on which the first two charges are based. I note that the summary does not record that anything came of your encouragement of the victim to recruit her friends.
[11] The third and fourth charges relate to an occasion in September 2023 when you saved to your phone a video showing the victim performing oral sex on you as you filmed her.
Personal circumstances
[12] You were born in May 1998. You were 25 when most of the alleged offending occurred. You are now aged 27.
[13] You told the Corrections pre-sentence report writer you had a violent and transient upbringing, you never knew who your father was and, said that when you were aged nine, your mother drove you to the Harley Davidson shop in downtown Wellington, invited you to pick a name and, after you had selected the name “Jay”, told you that would be your new name and she left you and never returned. You also said that, from that point onwards, you were homeless, would hang around Cuba Street in Wellington and were given cigarettes and alcohol by sex workers and strippers who worked in the area, and you used to sleep behind buildings.
[14] You have a somewhat fuller but different account to the writer of the Hokai Tupuwae Report. You said your life changed dramatically after your mother, whose mental health was fragile, entered a relationship with a man you called your stepfather, who used methamphetamine and beat you and your mother. You said it was when you were 10 or 11 that your mother took you to Newtown, asked you what name you would like to be called and, after you chose Jay, told you your brother lived behind the Caltex Service Station and had dropped you off outside the Harley Davidson store. In this account, you also say you began your life on the streets and associating with sex workers from this point. You also say that, by hanging around the Caltex Service Station you managed, with some help, to connect with your brother, who took you into his home and enrolled you at school. However, this did not last long because your brother moved to Australia after he had lost a child, and you were back on the streets. You then say you managed to connect up with your mother, who had moved into a
women’s refuge and, after a time, you moved in with her and she re-enrolled you at school but you lasted only two days. You also say that some time after this, you were taken into care by Child Youth and Family Services.
[15] The writers of a drug and alcohol report, who interviewed you for two hours less than a month ago, record that you told them your mother took you to central Wellington when you were 9 or 10 years’ old to spend time with your brother. You told them that your mother stopped outside the Harley Davidson shop, asked what name you would like to have if you could have any name in the world and, after you had said “Jay”, had given you a piece of paper with your brother’s address and told you to get out of the car. They also record that you say you began using cannabis when only 11 years’ old and homeless in central Wellington and described yourself as being passed around among extended family members, spending time in foster care and boys’ homes from an early age and as having vague memories of spending time in the care of Child Youth and Family Services. That report also says that you began to use cannabis and alcohol when you were 11 and homeless and continued to use these on a daily basis, and that you were introduced to methamphetamine by your stepfather when you were 15, which you continued to use on into your life.
[16] Given that these events are said to have occurred about 15 years ago when you were young, I do not read anything into the differences among the accounts. However, a police officer has provided a statement based on police records in which he says you were recorded as being at school in Tauranga when you were aged 10 and 11, you were enrolled at Miramar South School from 2011 when you were 13 and, although the police have about 50 records dating from December 2010, when you were 12, to May 2015, when you were 17, there is not a suggestion you were homeless.
[17] This calls into question the veracity and reliability of the various accounts you have given, as I will discuss later.
Purposes and principles of sentencing
[18] In sentencing you, Mr Paraire, I must take into account the purposes and principles of sentencing as outlined in ss 7 and 8 of the Sentencing Act. In particular, I must impose on you a sentence that holds you accountable for the harm your
offending has caused to the victim, her family and to the community, promotes responsibility for and acknowledgement of that harm, denounces your conduct, and deters you and others from committing similar offences in the future.5
[19] I must also take into account the gravity of the offending, the seriousness of this type of offending6 and the desirability of consistency with appropriate sentencing levels.7 If the offending is near to the most serious of cases, I am also required to impose a penalty near to the maximum penalty, unless circumstances relating to you make that inappropriate.8 However, I am also required to take into account your personal, family, whānau, community, and cultural background,9 and to be mindful of the need to assist in your rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.10 Your counsel also refers to the principle that I should impose the least restrictive outcome that is appropriate in the circumstances.11 However, as you will be well aware, there is no prospect of your avoiding a sentence of imprisonment.
[20] As your counsel will have explained to you, as a critical step in sentencing you, I must establish the starting point for calculating the sentence and in that context decide how to factor in the various elements of your offending. Once a starting point has been established, I must consider whether there should be any uplift or discounts by reference to your personal circumstances and any relevant aggravating or mitigating factors as set out in s 9 of the Sentencing Act.
Submissions for the Crown
[21] Mr Steele for the Crown submits that, because there is no tariff judgment with guidance on how sentences should be imposed for offending under s 98AA of the Crimes Act and because there are relatively few examples of sentences imposed for such offending, I should construct a starting point by reference to the purposes and principles of sentencing to which I have just referred, the aggravating and mitigating
5 Sentencing Act 2002, ss 7(1)(a), 7(1)(b), 7(1)(e) and 7(1)(f).
6 Sections 8(a) and 8(b).
7 Section 8(e).
8 Section 8(c) and (d)
9 Section 8(i).
10 Section 7(h).
11 Section 8(g).
factors in s 9, aggravating factors for sexual offending as established in earlier decisions, your role and the level of commerciality in your offending.
[22] As Mr Steele notes, neither the victim nor her friends were willing to cooperate with the police. He says it is for the Court to draw such inferences as it considers appropriate but accepts that you are entitled to the most favourable reasonable interpretation of the facts.
[23] Mr Steele says your offending was highly premeditated, sophisticated and significant because it involved dealing with a vulnerable victim for sexual exploitation and grooming over a period of about nine months. He says the offending was exacerbated by the involvement of additional victims and involved you attempting to position yourself at the head of a child prostitution ring.
[24] Mr Steele notes, in particular, the trauma that inflicted on the victim and her family as a result of your offending as was described in victim impact statement. Mr Steele says the Court can be satisfied you engaged in penetrative sexual conduct with the victim and recorded sexual conduct on at least one occasion. He also says your offending was carried out for your own commercial benefit, which is an aggravating factor, and there are no mitigating factors. He submits that the fact you and the victim were in a relationship is irrelevant in the context of sexual offending.
[25] In terms of a starting point, Mr Steele says, viewing the four charges holistically, your offending is near to the most serious of cases covered by those charges and warrants a starting point of eight years’ imprisonment. In making that submission, he advocates the adoption of a single starting point for all four charges. Mr Steele has provided a table of nine decisions imposing sentences for similar offending in which he notes the starting points adopted in each case. He discusses three of those decisions in his submissions. Because of the importance of these decisions to my sentence, I am just going to briefly describe them. Those decisions are:
(a)Kelly v R, where a starting point of four years’ imprisonment for one representative charge under s 98AA for dealing in a person under the
age of 18 for sexual exploitation, was upheld by the Court of Appeal to have been clearly within range;12
(b)R v R, where Collins J in the High Court held, on appeal from the District Court, that a starting point of three years and nine months’ imprisonment for a single charge under s 98AA for dealing in a person under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation was not out of range;13 and
(c)R v Lata, where the Court of Appeal held that a starting point of nine years and six months’ imprisonment for one representative charge under s 98(1) of the Crimes Act for a parent delivering their child into slavery and for a concurrent sentence on two representative charges under s 98AA for dealing in a person under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation was manifestly inadequate and imposed concurrent sentences for those two sets of offending based on a starting point of 14 years’ imprisonment – being the maximum sentence that could be imposed in both cases.14
[26] Mr Steele submits that your offending was significantly more serious than that in Kelly. He says it involved more charges and occurred over a longer period of time; the victim was more vulnerable than the victim in Kelly because she was in a relationship with you; and your offending involved significantly more premeditation and calculation because you groomed the victim and normalised sexual abuse, including by making a recording of her performing oral sex on you.
[27] Mr Steele also submits that your offending was significantly more serious than that in R v R. He says that while the victim in that case was four years’ younger than the victim in your case, the offending occurred within the context of a single discussion, your offending was more sophisticated and premeditated, and there was only one victim.
12 Kelly v R [2019] NZZCA 75 at [41].
13 R v R [2018] NZHC 2766 at [28].
14 R v Lata [2018] NZCA 615 at [43]–[47].
[28] Mr Steele accepts that your offending is significantly less serious than that in Lata but submits that it had some aggravating features present to a higher degree because it involved greater premeditation because you made an agreement to involve more prostitutes in an organised structure and you personally engaged in sexual conduct with the young person as part of your grooming.
[29] Overall, Mr Steele submits that a starting point of eight years’ imprisonment appropriately reflects your offending in which you were the leading figure in a nascent child prostitution ring that involved significant grooming and exploitation of the victim.
[30] In terms of personal mitigating and aggravating factors, Mr Steele submits that, although you entered your guilty pleas three working days before trial on what was a strong Crown case and after most trial preparation had already been done, a discount of 10 per cent is warranted because witnesses did not have to give evidence and there was a saving in Court resources.
[31] Mr Steele says the evidence of the police officer about your interactions with the police in your youth indicates that the most notable part of your claimed history— being abandoned by your mother and left homeless — is not true. However, he considers the evidence of your mother suffering from psychotic episodes and your stepfather being violent seems true and accepts that you began to use drugs at an early age. While not accepting there is a clear causal nexus between your upbringing and your offending, he says it is relevant to determining your culpability and that modest discount of five per cent is appropriate.
[32] On the other hand, Mr Steele submits that there should be an uplift of six months’ imprisonment for the fact you committed some offences while on bail while awaiting trial. However, he accepts that a small allowance could be made for the six months you have spent on electronically monitored bail.
[33] Based on Mr Steele’s submissions, your end sentence would be of the order of seven years’ imprisonment.
Submissions for defence
[34] Your counsel, Mr Ismail, submits that the requirements to impose the least restrictive sentence in the circumstances of you case and the need to consider your rehabilitation and reintegration into the community are of particular relevance.
[35] He advocates a different sentencing approach from that advanced by Mr Steele. Rather than considering the four charges together when setting a starting point, Mr Ismail submits that I should first set a starting point by reference to the two charges under s 98AA and then impose an uplift for the other charges.
[36] Mr Ismail refers to the three decisions discussed by Mr Steele, but also discusses sentences imposed in two other decisions. These are:
(a)R v B, where Venning J adopted a starting point of eight years’ imprisonment for 12 charges under s 98AA, including four charges of dealing in a person under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation;15 and
(b)R v Lawes, where Wylie J adopted a starting point of eight years’ imprisonment for 3 charges under s 98AA of dealing in a person under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation.16
[37] Mr Ismail submits that, while Lata can be seen as the highest end of the scale for offending under s 98AA, it is not particularly helpful because the lead charge was the slavery charge. He notes that the starting point advocated by the Crown, would put your offending at an equal level of seriousness to the offending in R v B, which he says involved a greater number of charges, significantly more serious offending and a much greater breach of trust and harm to the victim.
[38] Mr Ismail submits that Kelly is the most similar case but says that in that case, and also in Lata, Lawes and R v B, the victims were forced into their situations which was not the case with your offending. While not downplaying your role, he says it can be reasonably inferred from the summary of facts that there was no intimidation,
15 R v B [2021] NZHC 1405.
16 R v Lawes [2018] NZHC 2445.
coercion or pressure on the victim. He says your role as at arms-length, like that of a manager, as can be seen from the message from the victim telling you she was in town and your exchanges with her over how she might take advantage of individuals she was with. Mr Ismail submits that, unlike the offending in Kelly, Lata and R v B, your offending was unsophisticated, opportunistic and with minimal premeditation.
[39] Mr Ismail accepts your offending involved an abuse of a position of authority because of the disparity between your age and that of the victim and that the victim was vulnerable for the same reason. He also accepts there was an element of premeditation but says that is inherent in the offence.
[40] Overall, Mr Ismail submits that, while Kelly is the closest comparator decision, your offending was less serious because the victim in Kelly was sold to unknown men for sex against her will, the defendant’s role was far more significant, and it was proven that full penetrative sex occurred on at least four separate occasions.
[41] With regard to the second charge of agreeing to deal in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation, which appears not to have previously been laid in New Zealand, Mr Ismail says you were attempting to position yourself at the head of a child prostitution ring overstates what occurred and that your offending was entirely opportunistic and unsophisticated, and the proposed arrangement never eventuated.
[42] For these reasons, Mr Ismail submits that a starting point of three years’ imprisonment is warranted on the first two charges.
[43] With respect to the other two charges concerning your filming the victim performing oral sex on you, Mr Ismail says he has found no comparator case involving a single incident. However, he submits the Court can be assisted by decisions imposing sentences under s 134 of the Crimes Act for sexual connection with a young person under 16. He refers, in particular, to the Court of Appeal’s decisions in R v H, where the Court held that the starting point on conviction for sexual connection under s 134 could be fixed at four years’ imprisonment, and R v Johnson, where the Court held that the four years starting point in R v H is still a useful reference point for
sentencing for sexual connection with young persons, where the offending shares features present in that case.17
[44] Mr Ismail notes that the Court in Johnson held that the particular aggravating features in R v H were abuse of trust, a significant age gap between offender and victim, full penetrative sex on a number of occasions and significant adverse effects on the victim. However, it also discussed scenarios where the starting point may be increased or decreased, depending on the aggravating factors present. He also referred to a list of aggravating factors for this type of offending as identified by the Court of Appeal in Philpot v R.18
[45] With regard to your offending, Mr Ismail says account should be taken of a number of factors. These include that the age disparity was 11 years as compared to 21 years in Johnson; there was no full penetrative sex, only one instance of oral sex; there was no special relationship or breach of trust; this was a one-off encounter as compared with multiple instances considered in other decisions; there is no allegation of publication, no evidence of force or pressure on the victim and no allegation the victim took issue with the sexual act being filmed. He says that, while the victim’s consent does not bear on your guilt, it must bear on penalty.
[46] Accordingly, he submits an appropriate uplift for charges three and four is two years’ imprisonment and a global starting point for all the offending is five years’ imprisonment.
[47] Mr Ismail says your bail breach was the result of you losing your mother’s consent to being bailed to her address and that nothing further resulted and so no uplift is appropriate for that matter or for the offences you are said to have committed while on bail.
[48] With regard to personal mitigating features, Mr Ismail says your guilty plea came as soon as agreement had been reached on the summary of facts, once the text and Snapchat messages that formed much of the basis of the Crown case had been
17 R v H CA94/08 14 July 2008 at [17]; R v Johnson [2010] NZCA 168 at [17].
18 Philpot v R [2015] NZCA 212.
found to be admissible, and negotiations had concluded on the summary of facts. For these reasons, he asserts that your guilty plea came at what he describes as what was realistically the earliest reasonable opportunity and that you should be entitled to a 20 per cent discount.
[49] Mr Ismail also submits a further reduction of up to 20 per cent is appropriate in recognition of your personal circumstances which he describes as being unstable and characterised by inter-generational trauma, drug addiction and abuse.
[50] He also submits that I should make a further discount of three months to reflect the length of time you have been on electronically monitored bail.
[51] Based on Mr Ismail’s submissions, your end sentence would be two years and nine months’ imprisonment or less than half the end sentence advocated by the Crown.
The starting point
[52] In constructing the sentence, I begin by recording that I prefer the sentencing approach advocated by Mr Ismail, which is to establish a starting point for the sexual exploitation offending under s 98AA of the Crimes Act under charges 1 and 2 and then applying an uplift for the sexual offending under charges 3 and 4, rather than constructing a starting point for the four offences.
[53] There are three reasons for preferring that approach. First, the two sets of charges are distinct in nature. Charges 1 and 2 concern you exploiting or looking to exploit the victim and her friends in relation to sex with others. Charges 3 and 4 are about your offending personally against the victim. Secondly, that is the approach taken in other decisions where there were both charges under s 98AA and other sexual offending.19 Thirdly, as Collins J observed in R v R, sentencing under s 98AA is not an easy task because, among other things, a wide variety of conduct may be caught by the section.20 To bring the other charges into the calculation of the starting point would add to the challenge.
19 See R v Lata, above n 14; R v B, above, n 15; R v Lawes, above n 16.
20 R v R, above n 13, at [26].
[54] The next point I must emphasis is that I am sentencing you on the basis of the agreed statement of facts. There has been no trial and so no evidence of the circumstances that surround those facts. As Mr Steele says, I may draw such inferences as I consider appropriate. But, as both counsel accept, you are entitled to the most favourable reasonable interpretation of the facts.
[55] Based on that reality, I cannot accept some of the Crown’s characterisation of events. While I do not minimise the seriousness of your offending or the harm you have caused to the victim and her family, I do not consider the summary of facts provides a basis for concluding that your offending was highly premeditated or sophisticated or that you attempted to position yourself at the head of a child prostitution ring. Based on what is stated in the summary of facts, I accept that your offending was manipulative and exploitative. But it was more a case of you looking to take advantage of opportunities rather than seeking to make things happen.
[56] For similar reasons, I have some difficulty in equating your offending with the offending that occurred in some of the decisions referenced by counsel, particularly on the question of grooming. It may well be the reality that you groomed the victim for a period of almost 10 months as the Crown asserts. But I do not consider I can draw that inference from the summary of facts. That tells me the victim ran away from home, that you began and continued a relationship with her despite knowing she was only 14, that you encouraged her to prostitute herself and induced her to find work and perform sex acts, that you and the victim exchanged messages about what she was doing, and that the victim performed oral sex on you which you filmed. I consider your actions amounted to a gross breach of trust in relation to a vulnerable person, but I cannot take the inference much further than that.
[57] For all these reasons, I do not accept that your offending, while abhorrent and manipulative, can properly be characterised as near to the most serious of cases covered by the charges to which you have pleaded guilty.
[58] Bearing in mind that I am dealing here with the offending under s 98AA, your offending was less serious than that in Lata by a considerable distance, even setting aside the slavery charge in that case. To recall only the core aspects of the offending
in that case, Lata involved a mother pressuring an unwilling daughter to engage in sex with a large number of men on over 1,000 occasions. The Court of Appeal held that it warranted a starting point at the maximum penalty available.
[59] Your offending was also considerably less serious than that in R v B, where the 35 year old defendant advertised on-line a 15 year old for sex and set up nine separate occasions where different men had sex, or arranged to have sex, with the victim. It is also considerably less serious than that in Lawes, where the defendant arranged for vulnerable young children in the Philippines, some as young as three, four and seven, to perform sex acts which were live-streamed to the defendant, who directed what they were to do.
[60] I agree with Mr Ismail that Kelly is a closer comparator than the other decisions I have just referred to. I also consider the decision in R v R to have some relevance to the sentence to be imposed for your offending.
[61] Like you, the defendant in Kelly pleaded guilty to one representative charge under s 98AA of dealing in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation. As in your case, the victim was 14 and came voluntarily to live with the defendant. It also involved more than a single instance of exploitation and the victim was vulnerable.
[62] However, the defendant in Kelly went to considerably greater lengths to exploit the victim than you appear to have done on the evidence before me. As set out in the High Court decision of Downs J, the defendant advertised the victim by creating an on-line profile with false information, negotiated price, delivered the victim to the meeting place and placed pressure on the victim to sell herself for the defendant. Downs J held that behaviour, which he preferred to called calculation rather than premeditation, required time, effort and planning, which was an aggravating feature.21
[63] While I consider your offending also to have been calculated, on the information before me it did not have that level of time, effort and planning or that element of pressure. In addition, I cannot infer from the summary of facts that you arranged for the victim to engage in full penetrative sex acts. It may well be that such
21 R v Kelly [2018] NZHC 3183 at [3] and [15].
acts occurred and at your instigation. But I do not have a basis for inferring that this happened. There is also no evidence of you obstructing a police investigation, as occurred in Kelly.
[64] In these various respects, therefore, your offending in relation to charge 1 was less serious than the offending in Kelly. However, Downs J noted that the starting point he adopted of four years’ imprisonment was necessary but conservative and the Court of Appeal held that the offending was serious and the sentence clearly within range, even if it was higher than that advocated by the Crown.22
[65] In addition, I consider the breach of trust to be considerably more significant in your case than it was in Kelly. Your victim was a 14 year old runaway who entered into a relationship with you. While the sexual nature of the relationship was contrary to the law, there can no doubt that she put her trust in you in circumstances where she was unwilling to look to other for support — as her mother’s victim impact statement makes clear. Whether the age disparity was 11 years, 21 years, 31 years or more, the victim was vulnerable, and she trusted you.
[66] In R v R, one victim was 10 – significantly younger than your victim. The victim was also more vulnerable and the breach of trust was significantly greater. The defendant was the victim’s grandmother, who had shared naked images of her granddaughter with a man who offered up to $1,000 cash to have sex with her. However, while plans were made to exploit that victim and another 15 year old victim for sex, no sexual activity occurred with either victim. In that respect, the actual offending was significantly less serious than your offending. Yet it was held on appeal that a starting point of three years and nine months’ imprisonment was not out of range, even though no sexual exploitation occurred.23
[67] Given these two decisions, I have concluded a starting point of four years’ imprisonment for the two sexual exploitation charges is appropriate. In reaching that conclusion, I have taken into consideration that there are two charges under s 98AA in your case, as compared with one such charge in Kelly and R v R, and that the other
22 At [22]; Kelly v R, above n 12, at [51]
23 R v R, above n 13, at
charge involved other victims, even if your planned dealing was opportunistic and no actual sexual conduct occurred.
[68] With respect to the uplift for charges 3 and 4, I agree an uplift of two years’ imprisonment is appropriate, as advocated by Mr Ismail even though I do not agree with aspects of his analysis. While that analysis properly addresses charge 4, which is under s 134 of the Crimes Act, it does not address the seriousness of the offending under the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993, for which a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment applies. The analysis also underplays the breach of trust, which I have held to be significant.
[69] However, while I consider a starting point of up to three years’ imprisonment would have been appropriate for charges 3 and 4 if sentenced on a stand-alone basis, I am satisfied that an uplift of two years is appropriate for reasons of totality. This results on an overall starting point of six years’ imprisonment.
Personal mitigating and aggravating factors
[70] In terms of personal mitigating factors, I agree with Mr Steele that an allowance of no more than 10 per cent is appropriate for your guilty pleas.
[71] As the Court of Appeal has recently reaffirmed, on the basis of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hessell v R and its own decision in Moses v R,24 the allowance to be made for a guilty plea requires an evaluative analysis of the circumstances of the individual case, and the timing of the plea and the strength of the prosecution case are relevant considerations among others.25 Despite what Mr Ismail says about the admissibility of the text and Snapchat messages and the negotiation over the summary of facts, the guilty pleas were entered well after the first reasonable opportunity. You knew what you had done; you knew what messages had been exchanged; you knew the Crown case was strong. Your pleas were entered late and close to trial. However, your plea did save the Court time and avoided the need for witnesses to give evidence.
24 Hessell v R [2010] NZSC 135, [2011] 1 NZLR 607; Moses v R [2020] NZCA 296, [2020] 3 NZLR
583.
25 Karipa v R [ 2025] NZCA 274 at [31] and [34].
[72] In terms of your personal circumstances, there is a real question, as I have noted, about the credibility and veracity of the accounts you gave the different report writers, particularly with respect to whether you were abandoned by your mother and left homeless and on the streets. If this account were true, there would be a clear causal connection between your upbringing and your offending. However, because there is that question, I do not consider it appropriate to make an allowance of the scale such a causal connection might otherwise merit.
[73] Even so, the fact you had such a large number of interactions with the police when you were young confirms you had a difficult childhood. It also seems accepted that your mother had mental health and addiction issues and that your stepfather was abusive and that these were factors in that difficult and upbringing and may well have had a causal connection to your offending. For these reasons, I consider an allowance of 12 per cent to be appropriate.
[74] I have concluded there should be no separate uplift for the offending you are said to have committed while on bail. If charges have been laid, any penalty can follow findings of guilt. However, I agree there should be an allowance of two months for the time spent on electronically monitored bail.
[75]This results in an end sentence of four years and six months’ imprisonment.
Imposition of sentence
[76]Mr Paraire, please stand.
[77] For the charges of dealing in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation and agreeing to deal in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation, I sentence you to a term of four years and six months’ imprisonment.
[78] For the charges of knowingly making an objectionable publication and sexual conduct with a young person under 16, I sentence you to a term of two years’ imprisonment.
[79]The sentences are to be served concurrently.
[80] Because the offence of knowingly making an objectionable publication is qualifying offending under the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016, you are a registrable offender.
[81] That means, on release from prison, you will be required to comply with the reporting provisions of that Act. If you do not comply you will be liable for imprisonment for one year or a fine of $2,000 or both.
[82]Please stand down, Mr Paraire.
G J van Bohemen J
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