A man who paid a woman to take erotic photographs of him has been cleared on a charge of secretly filming her as she was about to take a shower.
The young woman, who had admitted partly funding her education by trading voyeuristic images of herself on the internet, accused the man of secreting a camera in clothing and towels on the floor of his bathroom shortly before she entered it to take a shower on December 4.
The names of both were suppressed at the end of a defended hearing in Hastings District Court today, as Judge Tony Adeane ruled that the couple's previous "unconventional but consensual" relationship was sufficient grounds for the man to have assumed her consent for the filming.
The couple met on an internet dating site in April 2008, and began a relationship based on erotic photography sessions every three or four weeks, for which the man initially paid her $300, then $100 a time. During those sessions they sometimes filmed each other.
About a year later, when the young woman was in financial strife, she moved into accommodation on a property that the man owned and also lived at.
Their relationship took on a less businesslike nature, and he began buying her groceries. In return, she was to take conventional photographs to help set up websites for his business.
The woman told the court she then sent the man an email telling him they must revert to a purely business relationship, but he told the court he never received it.
The woman claimed that on the morning of December 4, the shower in her accommodation was not working, so she went to the man's residence and asked to use his bathroom.
He told her to wait a moment while he went to the toilet.
The man admitted yesterday he seized the opportunity to put the camera in the bathroom because "I wanted to film her getting undressed".
He said the camera was on top of some towels and would have been clearly visible to her. Asked by police prosecutor Stu Emerson whether she would have been entitled to expect privacy, the man answered "no".
"I believed I had her consent," he said.
When the woman found the camera and stormed out of the bathroom to confront him, there were two other people in the room, and the man denied setting up the camera "to save her the embarrassment of revealing our history together".
He said he did not realise she was going to lay a complaint until police turned up at his house shortly before Christmas.
