Neil Sands
Former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming received nine months’ home detention and avoided being listed on the child sex offender registry when he was sentenced on Wednesday for possessing objectionable material, including images of bestiality and child sexual exploitation.
Flanked by security officers in the dock at the Wellington District Court, McSkimming, 52, nodded his head as the sentence was delivered, only showing emotion to wipe his eyes when Judge Tim Black said that credit for any good he had done in the community must be tempered by his “determined offending over a long period of time”.
McSkimming pleaded guilty in November to three representative charges of possessing objectionable material after his work device was searched in relation to a separate matter. This involved accusations from his former lover “Ms Z”, whose treatment by his former police colleagues has led to New Zealand’s biggest police scandal in decades.
“You were in a position of responsibility and trust within the community to protect its most vulnerable members, and you breached that trust and undermined both public confidence in the police and potentially the confidence of the survivors of sexual abuse, and sexual abuse of children in particular, to come forward,” Black said.
Porn addiction
McSkimming’s counsel, Letizea Ord, said her client – who was the country’s second-ranking police officer and a favourite for the top job before his offending emerged late last year – had suffered “a very, very significant fall from grace” due to a porn addiction “that simply overwhelmed him and got out of control”.
“He has lost his career. He has lost his financial security for the future, he is likely to be ostracized from the workforce. He has experienced relentless press exposure and public aggravation as a result of these matters,” she said, adding that McSkimming was “deeply ashamed” of his actions.
Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes laid out McSkimming’s offending in detail, revealing that over a four-and-a-half-year period he accessed almost 3,000 objectionable images, about one-third of which were child sex abuse material, with the bulk of the rest featuring bestiality.
While most of the images were cartoons or AI-generated, Hawes said around 280 depicted children or young people.
“The child sexual abuse material involves real victims and potentially suffering the severe and enduring psychological impacts of sexual violence,” Hawes said.
“The victims were inherently vulnerable. They were targeted with search terms seeking material with examples involving toddlers and older children who have been subjected to serious sexual violence.”
He said the artificial depictions of child sexual abuse were also damaging because they drove demand for sexual images of children.
“Images – even ones with no connection to reality, featuring sexualised children – promote and normalise child abuse.”
Hawes said McSkimming accessed the images on his police-issued phone, at times during work hours, “perpetuating the harm suffered by the most vulnerable victims of sexual violence”.
“While this was occurring, other police officers were investigating, prosecuting and picking up the pieces for exactly the same types of misconduct,” he said.
Prime target for serious violence
Black used a sentence starting point of three years imprisonment but applied discounts for McSKimming’s early guilty plea, his efforts at rehabilitation, prior good character and remorse.
This took the sentence below two years’ imprisonment, which allowed it to be converted to home detention, in line with Ord’s submission. The prosecution had argued for a four-year starting point, which would have resulted in a jail term.
“I agree home detention is appropriate,” Black said. “It is consistent with the principle of the least restrictive outcome and I know, in particular, the difficulties which you would encounter serving a sentence of imprisonment due to your previous role. You would be a prime target for serious violence,”
He did not order McSkimming’s inclusion on the child sex offender registry, citing a pre-sentence report which rated his risk of reoffending as low.
0 Comments