Use Your Imagination
This is a rather interesting case from the courts.
A 30 year old man, who has name surpression, decided to film an interaction with a prostitute.
He contacted the woman through a website which prohibits making video recordings.
While they were engaged in their sexual activity she spotted his cell phone and realised what he might be up to.
She seized his phone and called the police.
He appeared in the Napier District Court on Wednesday, pleading guilty to a charge of making an intimate recording.
Judge Tony Adeane granted an application for a discharge without conviction but ordered the man to make an emotional harm payment of $300.00 to the ‘victim’?
His cellphone was destroyed at the request of the police.
What do you think about this one?
I am happy for them to have destroyed his device for one….
and maybe he was lucky she was ONLY a prostitute and not a real woman.
Comment by eden apple — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 2:50 pm
#1 This is a vicious commercial exploitation of an emotionally vulnerable male in a commercial transaction and police protection to boot.
This fellow got screwed here – I’d wager she had already been paid for the job and only did half the work.
Be fair?
Comment by Evan Myers — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 3:05 pm
Hey now,, the website said no videos,,, the woman was doing her job here, it was a contract between the two of them, his privacy was protected and so should hers be… only fair.
Comment by eden apple — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 3:50 pm
He got his privacy..so should she.
Comment by eden apple — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 4:02 pm
his privacy was protected,, hers should be too, if he needed more for his money he should have paid for a cheaper service perhaps.
Comment by mama — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 4:24 pm
The man is very lucky. He could have been charged with Sexual Violation by Rape under S128A of the Crimes Act that states ‘(7) A person does not consent to an act of sexual activity if he or she allows the act because he or she is mistaken about its nature and quality’. In that case he would never have been discharged without conviction and he would almost certainly have been sentenced to substantial imprisonment, there being a 20-year maximum tariff.
S128A is a very dangerous piece of legislation. It seems to have been brought into law in 2005, unsurprisingly under the Clark government. It could be used to punish someone as a rapist when his actual offence was something much more trivial, like making a recording of activity that he had paid for. The wording of S128A is designed to persecute men by holding an accused responsible for the claimed beliefs or circumstances of a complainant rather than the accused’s behaviour. Although it is written in gender-neutral terms it was always expected that those accused of sexual crimes will be overwhelmingly men, so its appalling lack of justice was considered ok.
We are aware of other prosecutions using S128A to treat men as rapists when what they actually did was wrong in only more trivial ways.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 9:58 pm
Not sure what other posters here mean by “his privacy was protected, hers should be too”. There is no protection of privacy for customers of prostitutes. They have no legal requirement or code of ethics to maintain confidentiality and they would be legally entitled to tell the whole world that a person had been their customer. Indeed, they are prone to do so when it suits them, usually about famous people. That is one of the many holes in the law when prostitution was legalized: little protection for customers except rudimentary hygiene requirements.
It’s true though that a prostitute wouldn’t be legally entitled to make an intimate visual recording of a customer when that customer reasonably expected the situation to be private.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Wed 1st August 2018 @ 10:07 pm
#7, This chap had name suppression, if he had shown a recording of the her then her privacy would have been violated, I am sure that friends , family etc would not necessarily know what she did for a dollar.. there would be a lot of risk involved in that industry without electronic devices making it even worse.
Comment by eden apple — Thu 2nd August 2018 @ 12:46 pm
#8: His name suppression provided no argument for her right to privacy. She had that right by law and that’s why he was prosecuted. Her privacy was violated simply because the recording was made regardless of whom the man might have shown it to, but yes it would have been a worse breach to show others the recording. His name suppression was lucky for him but irrelevant to her right to not be recorded in a situation she reasonably expected to be private.
However, she has no right to privacy in the way you suggest. There is no law against a customer of a prostitute telling her family, anyone else, social media or the world about her work and providing her name if known. There would be no law against someone photographing the prostitute when she came out of the brothel on to the footpath, or publicly sharing that photograph. Probably it would not be illegal to take and share a photograph of her in a non-private part of the brothel such as the main foyer. The house rules against photographs are not laws.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Thu 2nd August 2018 @ 5:05 pm
I do not know but I suspect that name supression would possibly be a given in these “circumstance”, it is rather obvious that there is vast difference between the way a woman is treated compared to a “working woman”.
Regardless of the law her right to privacy should be upheld.
Some would consider the work these woman do, important.
Comment by eden apple — Fri 3rd August 2018 @ 6:08 am
The IRD certainly did. They were the largest group of tax evaders before their trade made legal.
Comment by Evan Myers — Fri 3rd August 2018 @ 7:11 am
Yeah them along with really big business.
Comment by eden apple — Fri 3rd August 2018 @ 12:42 pm
Important too for their own earnings at a rate for which men have either to study for years to gain professional qualifications or to work like Trojans to make a business work.
It has always been interesting that some women complain about attention shown to their sexual assets even though many of their sisters profit greatly from it. Begrudging their golden eggs.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Fri 3rd August 2018 @ 10:56 pm
What about the less sophisticated man, perhaps a little uncomfortable in the new authority of the female environment or reeling from a bad experience, who decides to go to a prostitute.
He forms an emotional attachment with the woman (and I’ve heard of cases where vulnerable men max out the credit card on false hope) but then the client finds himself no longer able to afford the service.
Because this is a man are we not able to see the emotional exploitation of the situation as we would if this was say a male doctor with a female patient.
Comment by Downunder — Sun 5th August 2018 @ 11:22 am