Police crack down on exploitation of children

A 47 year old man has been convicted of organising an underage sex tour but was found not guilty of promoting the tour. This came as a result of a two-year long operation involving the Police Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (OCEANZ) team, the Police Undercover Programme, Counties-Manukau Child Protection team and the New Zealand Customs Service.

Acting on information, the Police Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (OCEANZ) team established an investigation which uncovered a web site promoting tours to Thailand for people seeking sex with young boys.

An undercover Police Officer then made contact with the man through the website. The man made flight arrangements for himself and the undercover officer to travel to Thailand, where he had agreed to facilitate young boys for sex.

Detective Senior Sergeant John Michael, officer in charge of OCEANZ, said this was a successful cross-agency operation which established that this insidious type of exploitation was being conducted out of New Zealand.

Mr Michael is unable to comment or provide further information about the specifics of the case.

"We work closely with our partner agencies both in New Zealand and internationally on cracking down on this type of exploitation," said Mr Michael.

"People who engage in this horrible kind of abuse of young children must be stopped. We find this type of offensive behaviour involves people from more affluent nations travelling to poorer countries where children are exploited for financial gain."

"Where we uncover offending of this type we will continue to investigate and where possible prosecute using all Police resources, both overt and covert."