After police decided against laying charges against his deputy press secretary, who was accused of secretly recording women, the prime minister said he was open to looking at the law. So when two victims of secret recordings met up for the first time, they decided to draft Luxon a legislative wishlist.
Strange that when we finally meet for the first time, it’s right after Christopher Luxon’s deputy chief press secretary is accused of secretly recording women.
Angelene texts me to say she’s sitting at the high tables as you come in the doors, but I don’t need help recognising her: I’ve seen her face in the Herald.
We are strangers but we hug immediately. We are strangers but we perch on bar stools in this chain restaurant, next to people ordering calamari with aioli and lemon, and we say wildly intimate things.
“I’m doing better with toilets now.”
“You know, there’s a whole section on PornHub called ‘She Doesn’t Know?’”
Angelene first messaged me in 2020 after I caught a stranger filming me in a Kmart changing room and wrote about it. Her best friend had used hidden cameras to film her over many years. Back then, she couldn’t see how she would ever get justice. Her case was distressing and complex and it wasn’t hers alone – there were many victims, including children. I was through the worst of my own jagged quest for justice, and messaged her well-intentioned, thoroughly inadequate encouragement. (There’s no Hallmark way to say, “Commiserations on being betrayed, objectified and traumatised. Oh, and you can totally make it through our creaking criminal justice system!”) That was it for years.
Then, this April, I clocked a headline in the Herald: “Auckland man Micah Fala, who secretly filmed girls, women with covert spy cameras, jailed for four years”. The circumstances sounded familiar. Could this be Angelene’s case? Had she really hung on, clawing her way through the justice system for all these years?
I opened LinkedIn, where she had first messaged me, and started scrolling back through five years of conversations trying to find our old chat. I couldn’t.
More headlines. “Angeline Judge on bringing down the Auckland man who secretly filmed her and 21 women, girls”. The stories were nightmarish: “He recorded me over my 20s and 30s in the shower, the toilet and the bedroom and he kept that footage for over a decade.” The stories were about grit: Angelene had to go through footage of the crimes with police to identify the victims. The stories were a snowball running down a hill: Micah Fala rolled through them, amassing more and more victims before he was finally arrested. He pleaded guilty to 42 charges, including knowingly possessing objectionable material, knowingly making an objectionable publication and multiple charges for sexual conduct with a young person. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
A week or so after he was sentenced, ding! A message from Angelene. “My mother reminded me last week of your encouraging words and the example you set as our case finally saw justice. Thank you for being a light xx”.
We messaged off and on, then arranged to meet. Now, here we are. We order drinks but no food. The stuff we want to discuss doesn’t do much for the appetite. We talk about how we sweep toilets, changing rooms and hotel rooms for cameras. We discuss what it feels like to fear there are videos of you online and what internet porn is doing to our culture. Then, we talk about some of the most recent secret filming cases – the Auckland clothing shop owner charged with making dozens of “intimate visual recordings”, the Scottish electrician who installed hidden cameras in his clients’ bedrooms and bathrooms, and the Beehive-rattling revelations about Christopher Luxon’s deputy press secretary, Michael Forbes.
Earlier this month, Stuff told the story of a Wellington sex worker who said she caught Forbes secretly making audio recordings during their session. She claimed she had gone on to find audio recordings of other sex workers on his phone, as well as photos taken at a gym, zoomed in on women working out. She had also shown Stuff videos of women, shot through windows.
Forbes resigned and publicly apologised to “the women I have harmed”, saying he had sought treatment.
Police said they wouldn’t lay charges. There were already known holes in the law around image-based sexual abuse, but the Forbes story threw up new ones. Audio recordings of sex, even with no consent, are legal, as the law is focused on visuals. Images taken in a public place of clothed people, regardless of how zoomed in, are legal.
Luxon, possibly more pale than usual, stood in cold light at the Beehive and faced journalists. One asked him about the law.
“I’m open to looking at our settings again as we go through this experience. We have a series of laws, whether it’s the harmful digital bill, whether it’s the privacy laws, or, now, new stalking laws, but we’re open to looking at that further as well,” Luxon said.
I say to Angelene, “We could tell him some things to look at, couldn’t we?”
“We could,” she says.
I grab a serviette, Angelene fossicks around in her bag and passes me a pen, then we start drafting our legislative wishlist.
1. Ban spy cameras. You can buy tiny cameras disguised in smoke alarms, car key remotes, alarm clocks, USB chargers and pens. In all the years Angelene was filmed she never spotted a camera. It’s hard to think of a reason for having hidden cameras widely available that isn’t outweighed by the risk. Worried about crime? Wouldn’t you rather deter it than capture it? Put a fuck-off big camera up. Hell, add a warning sign and flashing lights if you’ve got the budget.
This won’t solve the problem of people using their phones to make nefarious recordings (the man who filmed me used a phone), but we’re pragmatic. There are legitimate, everyday reasons to sell recording-enabled phones. Hidden cameras? Less so.
2. Get audio recordings into the Crimes Act pronto. As we’ve discovered via the Michael Forbes story, right now someone can make audio recordings of you having sex without your consent and there’s no legal recourse. There’s no world in which this is OK.
3. Broaden the definition of what constitutes “intimate”. Right now the crime of making an intimate visual recording must tick one of two boxes. Either the victim must be in a situation where they would expect privacy or they must be recorded naked or in underwear. The allegation that Forbes’ phone contained zoomed in images at the gym doesn’t seem to fit either of these requirements. But, do we want people to be able to zoom in on our bodies as long as we’re covered in a fortress of security in the form of, say, a T-shirt?
4. Give all complainants in sexual offence cases name suppression. We’re giving you an easy win here, PM. Right now, complainants in intimate visual recording cases don’t get automatic name suppression. I can tell you from experience it’s distressing as hell to find you have no control as to when you are publicly named unless you apply to the court for name suppression. The good news is there’s a law in the offing that can resolve this. The Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Protections) Legislation Bill is headed for its third reading. Let’s get it passed, eh?
5. But if you’re going to do one thing, take a principles-based approach. Technology will keep evolving which means there will always be new problems (right now, there are problems with AI deepfake porn, sextortion and unsolicited nudes). We encourage you to go ahead and make swift, specific changes now, but really what we need is one, overall approach to deal with image- (and audio-)based sexual abuse that is effective regardless of what technology is developed in the future. As the Canterbury law professor Cassandra Mudgway says, we need to develop legal settings that protect our privacy, autonomy and consent.
The waitress approaches: “Can I get you anything else?
“Legislative change,” I say.
“A cultural shift,” Angelene says.
It’s too much to ask. No Mediterranean restaurant kitchen keeps either in stock. So, Christopher Luxon, while we won’t hold you solely responsible for shifting porn culture, you did say you were open to legislative change. This is us putting in our order.
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