“I am of the view your meetings with the victims were well planned and orchestrated. The range of violations here for both victims was significant.”
While neither victim appeared in court or supplied a victim impact statement, “I accept the offending would have been traumatic”, the judge added, explaining that “they may have ongoing psychological issues due to this offending”.
Encounters with children
The Pukekawa resident had driven to Auckland and picked up the 13-year-old from outside the hospital in June 2024. The child had been introduced to him online through another underage hospital patient, who had been in contact with Anderson through the sugar daddy website.
Anderson and the younger victim arranged to have sexual intercourse for $400.
“The defendant asked the first complainant’s age, to which she responded, ’19x’,” the agreed summary of facts states. “The defendant took no further steps to ascertain her age.”
At the Epsom Motor Inn, he got her drunk then noted she looked nervous before engaging in unprotected sex and other illegal acts.
Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock said Anderson would have known he was dealing with a vulnerable person based on the child’s self-harm scars and the fact he picked her up from a children’s hospital.
But defence lawyer Felix Poole said his client had been told by the girl that she was visiting her sister at the hospital. Messages found by police confirmed that the girl claimed to be 19. Given that claim, there was no way of knowing if the scars had been from her distant past, the lawyer said.
But if he claimed ignorance for the first victim, he certainly should have known better for the second victim, the prosecutor responded.
“He knew that young people on this site were putting themselves forward as older than they were,” McClintock said, noting that there was even a third experience found on messaging in Anderson’s phone in which he realised a girl falsely claimed to be 19.
Like the defendant, the 15-year-old also lived in the Waikato region. A friend of the second victim told Anderson that the girl was 16, but “the defendant at no point directly asked the second complainant her age”, court documents state.
In August 2024, Anderson sent the teen an oral sex instructional video then arranged to meet up with her the next day for $150. He drove her to the same Auckland motel where he had committed the previous crimes.
The girl did a single agreed-upon sex act “before stopping and telling Anderson that she did not want to do it any more”, court documents state. He instead rolled on top of her, pulled off her clothes and had sex with her. He paid her about $400 before dropping her off.
She was admitted to the Waikato Hospital Emergency Department about four hours later for self-harm.
‘Power imbalance’
As a result of his guilty pleas, Anderson faced up to seven years’ imprisonment for two counts of contracting for sex with a person under 18 – one charge for each victim. He also faced up to 10 years’ imprisonment for seven counts of sexual connection with a young person relating to various ways in which he violated the girls.
He could have faced up to 20 years’ imprisonment had he instead pleaded guilty to rape.
The defence had asked for the sentencing hearing to be adjourned so that Anderson could continue attending one-on-one counselling sessions with a psychologist who specialises in treating problem sexual behaviour. He had attended 11 sessions since March and it would benefit the entire community if he was able to complete the programme, his lawyer argued.
The judge declined the request.
In that case, the defence argued, he should receive a sentence reduction for the uncompleted programme.
“He’s shown a clear intention to address his offending,” Poole said. “He’s done everything he can to rehabilitate himself.”
Poole also pointed out that Anderson had no prior convictions, was assessed as a low risk of further offending and was “truly remorseful”, having offered $2000 in emotional harm reparation to each victim “in recognition that Mr Anderson has hurt these two young people”.
He sought a three-year starting point for all charges combined, arguing that Anderson’s behaviour shouldn’t be characterised as “grooming” since it was on a dating website that claims to restrict users under 18.
But the messaging prior to the meet-ups did show grooming, Judge Hughes said, setting a starting point of five years in line with what the Crown had proposed.
“The age disparity here is significant,” she explained. “On the face of it, there is a power imbalance by that fact alone.”
Anderson was allowed 40% in sentence reductions for his guilty pleas, his “real steps to address underlying issues” through therapy, his remorse and for the hardship a prison sentence would cause his wife, the judge concluded.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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