Man jailed for selling teen as sex slave
On her 15th birthday she was dressed in a short skirt, had make-up applied and was forced into prostitution by her mother and stepfather.
The pair had pressured her that the family would be homeless and left to starve if she did not sell herself for sex.
The 26-year-old stepfather who kept his partner’s teenage daughter as a prostitute has now been jailed.
Avneesh Sehgal was sentenced to four years and eight months behind bars when he appeared at the High Court in Auckland yesterday.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to three charges of dealing in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation and receiving earnings from commercial sexual services provided by an underage person.
The victim, who has permanent name suppression, escaped her nightmare in 2016 and fled to the police in Whangarei.
Last month, her mother Kasmeer Lata was jailed for six years and 11 months for her part in the case.
The slave dealing conviction for her treatment of her daughter is one of just three in New Zealand’s legal history, since the crime was written into the Crimes Act in 1961.
The victim and her mother arrived in New Zealand in 2014 on visitor visas from Fiji. Towards the end of that year Lata met Avneesh Sehgal and they entered into a relationship, court documents said.
Shortly after they began their relationship they moved into a house in Papatoetoe and Lata asked the victim if she would work as a prostitute in order to raise money for the family to start a business and to have food to eat. The daughter initially refused. Lata told her they would starve and would be homeless and she would only have to sell herself for sex for one month.
Sehgal and Lata advertised the girl in an Auckland newspaper as one of two ‘‘HOT SEXY busty Indian girls’’ and said she was 18-years-old. She was only 14 at the time. Sehgal paid for those advertisements. On the victim’s 15th birthday, she was sold for sex for the first time. She was dressed up in a short skirt, had her hair straightened and had make-up applied.
Despite continually expressing she did not want to go through with the arrangement, her mother coached her on how to have sex. A man paid $200 to have sex that day and he then became a regular at the home, arriving every two weeks to have sex with the teen.
As Lata did not have a valid New Zealand visa, she was unable to open a bank account and therefore Sehgal’s bank account was used to deposit all of the cash earnings. Her mother continued to organise men to come to their home. When neighbours started to get suspicious that the house was operating as a brothel, the family moved to Takanini.
In the 18-month-period the teen was forced to be a sex slave, she was sold about 1000 times or about five times a day, the court heard. She made about $100,000 in earnings, most of which was kept by Sehgal and Lata.
In his sentencing Justice Lang said there was no dispute Sehgal played a far lesser role in the offending than the victim’s mother. ‘‘Nevertheless you played a significant role.’’
Justice Lang said the ordeal had a devastating effect on the victim. ‘‘The effects of the offending will last for her forever.’’
Once he has served his jail time Sehgal would be deported to India.