Home detention for toilet spying
New Zealand’s former top military attache to the United States has been sentenced to home detention after being found guilty of planting a hidden bathroom camera at the Kiwi embassy in Washington DC for his own “sexual gratification”.
But the 59-year-old continues to deny his offending.
Alfred Keating, the country’s former Assistant Chief of Navy, was sentenced yesterday in the Auckland District Court by Judge Robert Ronayne after his nearly twoweek trial in April.
A jury found the now disgraced former naval officer guilty of attempting to make an intimate visual recording of another person when he hid a camera in a unisex bathroom in the building during July 2017.
He will spend four months and 15 days on home detention for what the judge said was “bizarre and reprehensible” offending.
For a brief moment Keating may have believed he would serve his sentence behind bars after a slip of the tongue by Judge Ronayne saw a prison sentence accidentally imposed. Keating had planted the motion-activated camera in a heating panel to film his colleagues during their most unguarded moments, with Judge Ronayne saying he “did so for [his] own sexual gratification”.
Keating, then a commodore, was the senior defence attache to the US at the time. He was the face of diplomacy, negotiating and strategy for the Defence Force (NZDF) to one of New Zealand’s most important allies.
He also held full diplomatic status and immunity from prosecution by US authorities, but after the camera was found NZ police began an investigation. The single charge against the former Devonport Naval Base chief was laid in March last year. His decorated four-decade military career ended when he left the NZDF two days after denying the charge that month.
Benjamin King, the deputy secretary of the Americas and Asia Group for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), said Keating’s offending had potentially risked bilateral relationships with the US which can take decades to cultivate.
Keating, who joined the Navy in January 1976 and was posted on HMNZS Otago, has always denied the allegation and previously said he felt he was wrongly charged and the victim of a horrible coincidence.
In an earlier statement he told the Herald: “I certainly intend to clear my name and expect this will be achieved in time.”
Keating maintains his innocence, the court heard yesterday.
“You have no remorse whatsoever and you are not innocent,” Judge Ronayne said. “The height from which you have fallen is self-inflicted.”
Keating’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield, said Keating’s professional and personal life is now in tatters.
In a statement to the Herald after sentencing, an NZDF spokesperson said Keating’s crime does not reflect the values of the NZDF nor the behaviour expected of its personnel.
During the trial, Crown prosecutor Henry Steele said Keating’s motivation was to covertly film his colleagues using the toilet. “This was not an act of espionage,” he said.
Keating accused embassy staffer and his driver Mike Waller of being the guilty man.
“At trial you tried to blame an innocent man . . . Publicly accusing him of your crime,” Judge Ronayne told Keating yesterday.
Questions by the Herald to MFAT, which is responsible for New Zealand’s embassies, about the investigation and embassy security have gone unanswered.