Jail for mum who sold girl as sex slave
Lata traded 15-year-old daughter to men about 1000 times over two-year period
Ocourt ne of New Zealand’s most sickening criminal cases, just the third conviction for slave trading in the country’s legal history, can now be revealed.
A mother of a teenage daughter has been jailed for six years and 11 months after keeping her daughter as a sex slave and selling her body to men about 1000 times over a twoyear period.
She was sold as many as five times a day.
The teen, who has permanent name suppression, escaped her horror in November 2016 and fled to police.
Kasmeer Lata, the teen’s mother, was sentenced yesterday in the High Court at Auckland by Justice Matthew Muir for dealing in slaves and receiving earnings from commercial sexual services from an underage person.
“Ms Lata has come to the realisation that she may well be the most despised woman in New Zealand, that will be her burden,” defence counsel Karl Trotter said.
Minutes after Lata was sentenced her partner Avneensh Sehgal pleaded guilty to dealing in underage people for sexual exploitation and receiving earnings from underage sexual exploitation.
The Herald can also reveal Sehgal was arrested at Auckland International Airport on Monday night attempting to board a plane to India.
Sources said Sehgal was stopped with a large bag and cash. He told border security and police he was travelling to Delhi to tend to his ill father.
Sehgal was due to go to trial next week and will now be remanded in custody until his sentencing next month.
During the 18 months the teen was sold as a sex slave it is estimated her 36-year-old mother collected about $100,000, keeping half, court documents show.
It is the first case of its kind in New Zealand under a specific subsection of the Crimes Act, Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court.
The slave dealing conviction is also one of just three in New Zealand’s legal history, since the crime was written into the Crimes Act in 1961.
The teen, in her victim impact statement, said she suffered from regular pain as a result of her trauma and had mental-health issues.
“I have to make up lies about four years of my life and why I live on my own without my parents’ support.
“I see men differently now, I think they always want something from me and that is why they are talking to me,” she said.
“I wonder what I did to deserve my mum. All I wanted was your love as a child, teenager, and your girl.”
Justice Muir said Lata’s offending has caused “long-lasting, if not irreparable damage to her daughter” as she “effectively pimped her out”.
He imposed a minimum period of imprisonment of three years and five months.
Lata told her daughter to begin work as a prostitute to help feed her family when just 14 years old, court documents read.
Despite refusing, the teen was sold for the first time on her 15th birthday.
Over the next year and a half the teen was kept as a prisoner inside a Papatoetoe home.
She had moved to New Zealand from Fiji with her mum and brothers a year before her horror began.
However, their visitor visas expired and they began living as illegal immigrants. The family soon ran out of money and Lata placed adverts on Craigslist and in the Herald, which offered her daughter for sexual services. The mum lied about her daughter’s age in both ads.
As business increased, Lata arranged a photo shoot with online escort agency New Zealand Girls.
Soon more men began to request the teen and her mother began taking her to motels around Auckland for as many as five “appointments” per day, each appointment costing up to $200 per hour.