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Former community chair guilty of paying for child sex shows

Author
NZ Herald ,
Publish Date
Fri, 3 Aug 2018, 12:08PM
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Former community chair guilty of paying for child sex shows

Author
NZ Herald ,
Publish Date
Fri, 3 Aug 2018, 12:08PM

A former North Shore community board chairman has pleaded guilty to paying for access to live child sex shows.

Martin Henry Lawes appeared in the High Court at Auckland today before Justice Graham Lang.

Lawes, the former chairman of the Takapuna Community Board which fell under the now defunct North Shore City Council, pleaded guilty three counts of entering into a dealing involving people under 18 for sex, one charge of being knowingly concerned in the importation of objectionable publications, and one charge of possessing an objectionable publication.

He was due to go to trial in February next year.

According to court documents, between January 1 and December 31, 2015 Lawes "entered into a dealing involving a person under 18 for the purpose of sexually exploiting that purpose".

Lawes was arrested last September. It came, a Herald source said, after an investigation into an international child pornography operation led by the FBI in the US.

Lawes paid a significant amount of money to enable him to access live child sex shows, which are understood to have been filmed in Asia and streamed in New Zealand on a computer.

He will be sentenced in September.

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