Lawyer hired underage prostitutes
A lawyer who hired underage girls for sex acts claims he had no idea the legal age for sex and prostitution was different – something a Crown prosecutor says ‘‘beggars belief’’.
Quentin Stobart Haines, an O¯ taki lawyer, was sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court yesterday to six months of home detention for receiving commercial sexual services from two women younger than 18. He was also ordered to pay each victim $500 emotional harm reparation.
Haines pleaded guilty in July after getting a sentence indication of a community-based sentence.
Haines’ offending occurred in August 2017, when he arranged to pay two females for sex acts.
He met the first through dating website Seeking Arrangement.
The girl listed herself on the website as 19 but was actually 14.
They exchanged text messages before meeting at Wellington Railway Station, with another man present.
They then went to a house and had sexual relations, while the man waited in a different room.
Haines paid her $300 and exchanged phone numbers with the man, who Haines asked to find him other women he could pay for sex. The man arranged contact between Haines and a 17-year-old girl, who told Haines her real age.
The legal age for prostitution is 18 – a fact Haines was not aware of.
He met the 17-year-old at Wellington’s Karori Park, before taking her somewhere else, where she performed oral sex for $50.
Haines paid the man $100 for arranging the girl’s contact.
Crown prosecutor Michael Blaschke said Haines had no real remorse for the victims and was only sorry for the situation he found himself in.
Haines had said he did not know the legal age of sexual consent was different than the legal age of prostitution.
‘‘That beggars belief for a man in his position,’’ Blaschke said.
Defence lawyer Paul Knowsley said it was a ‘‘spectacular fall from grace’’ for Haines, who had lost his law practice and career as a result of his offending.
Haines acknowledged the money he offered the girls as reparation – $1000 – was a ‘‘token offering’’ but it was all he could give in the circumstances, Knowsley said.
Judge Lance Rowe said the legal age for prostitution was publicised widely when the law came into place.
‘‘Ignorance of the law is, of course, no excuse. ‘‘You took insufficient care.’’ The law was in place to protect young people from sexual exploitation and, sometimes, from themselves, the judge said.
A pre-sentence report described Haines as being deeply disgusted at himself and at pains to try to do the right thing.
That, combined with the offer of reparation and efforts to get treatment, showed he was truly remorseful, the judge said.
‘‘You express concern you have brought the legal profession into disrepute by your offending.’’
This is not the first time Haines has had a brush with the law.
He was sentenced to periodic detention after being found guilty in 2001 of conspiracy to defraud.
That offending happened when he was working as a travelling salesman for his father’s company, New Zealand Diagnostics.
He would sell items, some of which were Governmentsubsidised, to doctors and nurses.
The company had a system where non-subsidised items were ordered on the forms that should have been used only for subsidised items.
That conviction required him to go to the High Court to get a legal practising certificate, after the Law Society turned him down.
According to a 2006 High Court judgment, Justice Graham Lang said Haines was under his father’s influence when offending and had turned his life around.