Man says he thought boy he touched was older

A MAN accused of indecently touching an underage boy says the touching was consensual and he thought the boy was older because he knew so much about motor vehicles.

Dunedinbased Nicholas Birch says he was put in touch with the boy by a family member who said the boy was 19.

Birch, who said he was travelling all around New Zealand for his work as a horse chiropractor, said he saw and photographed the complainant’s facebook page, listing his birth date as October 18, 1995. And he had at some stage asked the complainant his age and was assured he was over 16.

The 30yearold defendant is on trial in the Dunedin District Court on charges of doing an indecent act on a young person under 16 between August 24 and September 6 last year and wilfully attempting to obstruct justice by remotely factoryresetting his iPhone between October 14 and 16 after police had seized it.

The second charge relates to the fact that when a police officer opened Birch’s phone on October 16, two days after a police interview, the phone had been reset to its factory setting.

On the first day of the trial on Wednesday, Judge Peter Rollo and a jury heard the boy’s videotaped evidence that Birch messaged him on facebook and offered to pay him to masturbate in front of him. When he asked Birch how much, he was told $500 and Birch asked for a picture of his genital area ‘‘so then he’d know if he was keen or not’’.

The complainant said he sent the photo and Birch picked him up in a blue Ford Ranger three days later. Birch started talking about someone coming out of jail for shooting a person in the kneecaps.

‘‘I don’t know why he said that,’’ the complainant said.

They drove to Forbury, parked up a gravel driveway and Birch connected Bluetooth to his stereo so they could hear the audio then played some pornography on his phone. They watched and he began masturbating but stopped when Birch, who was in the back seat, leaned over and touched him.

Birch asked him to do things which he found ‘‘creepy’’, the complainant said. He asked to be taken home.

But he later pretended to ‘‘suss out a threesome’’ because he ‘‘wanted the money’’.

Birch’s evidence yesterday was the arrangement was he would pay the complainant $500 to arrange a threesome. He had not arranged a payment for their first meeting but did give the complainant about $60 or $70, which he had in his pocket.

They had Snapchatted before meeting on August 29 and the complainant arranged a threesome with a man called Tony. Birch said he did not find Tony attractive and pretended he had to attend to a horse at Waikouaiti.

The messages were on his personal phone, not his work phone, he said.

He denied touching the complainant at all at their first meeting but said when he met him again on September 5 he had touched him because the complainant asked him to.

Asked by defence counsel Len Andersen whether he asked the complainant’s age, Birch said he was unsure when he was interviewed, but had thought about it a lot for a year and was sure he had. It was clear from other text messages that ‘‘I don’t not ask ages’’.

Crossexamined by Crown counsel Robin Bates, Birch denied ‘‘creeping’’ out the complainant by touching him at their first meeting. The complainant had kept messaging him and knew the $500 was for arranging a threesome.

He denied remotely accessing and resetting his phone when it was with the police. It was his work phone and quite a few people had access to it.

The jury heard closing arguments from Crown and defence counsel late yesterday and Judge Rollo will sum up to the jury today before leaving the case with them.