A woman at work in an Auckland CBD brothel noticed her client touching his Ray-Ban Meta glasses. A light came on. He was trying to film her without her consent.

He pleaded guilty. He has already been granted a discharge without conviction. This week he asked the North Shore District Court to permanently suppress his name, because being named might cost him his software engineering job.

“That is not what name suppression is for,” says Jillaine Heather, CEO of the Free Speech Union.

“The legal threshold is ‘extreme hardship’. Potential job risk and embarrassment is not extreme hardship. Concern about commentary on social media is not extreme hardship. If any of those things qualified, every defendant in the country would walk out of court with their name hidden.”

“Open justice is the rule. Suppression is the exception. That principle is older than the Criminal Procedure Act and more important than any individual defendant’s discomfort.”

The victim told the court in her impact statement that she believes the defendant is “dangerous and sneaky” and that women in his workplace and life should know what he did. The prosecutor told the court the employer should know about the offence.

“Open courts protect everyone,” Heather says. “They protect the public from offenders they cannot identify. They protect future victims, who can only come forward if they know the pattern. They protect the integrity of the justice system itself, which loses public trust the more it operates behind a curtain.”

“Parliament tightened the law on permanent name suppression for sex offences late last year, precisely because public patience had run out with this pattern. A discharge without conviction should not become a back door around that change.”

“If the court grants suppression here, it tells every complainant who has ever taken the stand in a New Zealand courtroom that her voice carries less weight than a defendant’s career anxiety. The victim wants his name known. The prosecutor wants his name known. The court should refuse suppression.”

Notes:

The Free Speech Union has campaigned consistently for open courts and against the routine grant of name suppression where the legal threshold is not met.

Background: NZ Herald, 12 May 2026, “Auckland engineer who tried to film sex worker with smart glasses fights for suppression”.

The “extreme hardship” threshold is set out in section 200 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011. Adverse publicity, employment consequences, and embarrassment have repeatedly been held insufficient on their own to meet it.

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