Zealander man accused of organising child sex tour

 

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An Auckland businessman has become the first New Zealander to go on trial for allegedly organising and promoting a child sex tour to Asia.

The 47-year-old motel and property owner, who has name suppression, denied a charge of organising a child sex tour and one of promoting a child sex tour at the High Court in Auckland today.

The man was arrested late last year after an eight-month police investigation, shortly before he was to leave for Thailand.

"The accused was the subject of a passenger alert that had been placed on him," customs officer Timothy Houston told the court.

The charges relate to a website that offered guided tours to Thailand, ''catering to your interests and desires'', the court was told.

The court heard how an undercover police officer posed as an interested client to the website, which the accused administrated.

While the website, which remains online, did not openly express references to gay sex, it was inferred through meta data where the website would show up in searches including the words 'gay', 'Thailand', 'tour', 'gay sex' and 'boy', the court heard.

Website wording also included ''catering to travellers' special interests''.

The case centres on evidence from the undercover agent, whose identity is protected under the pseudonym Michael Gray. This includes hours of secretly taped conversations between the accused and the officer, which is being played in the closed Auckland court.

Crown lawyer Natalie Walker told the court these were "deliberately suggestive references."

The Crown alleges a tour was organised for the officer after he expressed interest in commercial sex with pre-pubescent boys in Thailand.

Gray got in touch with the accused through the website, and was given an explicit Thai phrase card which was to help him pick up young men from bars, Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker said. 
  
An identical card was found in the accused's luggage by Customs staff, along with photographs of the accused with teenage boys, including one in which he had his arm around a boy, on a return trip from Thailand in December 2009, the court heard.

"(The phrase card had) how much it would cost for a short time or a long time, overnight, and how to ask for explicit sexual acts to be performed by or on a male," the Crown said today.

The accused told Gray while sex with boys was ''extremely dodgy'', it was available in Thailand, he had no moral issue with it and could point Gray in the right direction, the Crown alleged.

The man had been on several trips to Thailand and talked with Gray about how and where to meet boys, and a trip was booked.

Among Crown witnesses were STA travel agents who noted the accused's demands that his name not be included in Gray's travel documents, and that their documents remained separate.

The Crown alleged the accused told Gray he'd "had a few of the local boys and they were very green and really raw''.

"The accused suggested it would be easier to find young boys to have sex with in Patea than in Bangkok. He said he would find them a place (that) wasn't going to cause them any dramas. He said he'd stayed at a motel in Patea that wasn't brilliant but that the motelier had offered him his son," the court heard from the Crown.

But the term 'boys' in Thailand's gay community also referred to those 18 and over, defence lawyer Chris Wilkinson-Smith said.

''(The accused) candidly accepted he was attracted to teenage boys and realised it was illegal and was careful not to cross the line.''

The defence said the policeman was also the only person to ever enquire and book a trip.

The accused told Gray he would not assist him in anything illegal, saying what was offered in Thailand was ''beyond your wildest dreams'' and there was no need to do anything illegal, Wilkinson-Smith said.

He said the accused told Gray that Thailand 18-year-olds often looked much younger.

 via http://tvnz.co.nz