{"id":36180,"date":"2025-09-22T06:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T06:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/36180\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T06:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T06:20:07","slug":"waikato-man-ashley-owen-avoids-hefty-sentence-as-crown-unable-to-prove-exact-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/36180\/","title":{"rendered":"Waikato man Ashley Owen avoids hefty sentence as Crown unable to prove exact age"},"content":{"rendered":"

He would also call her and play the videos<\/a> to her, so they could both see them.<\/p>\n

Owen\u2019s behaviour was discovered after police seized his phone.<\/p>\n

He had earlier admitted four charges of sexual connection with a young person, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not just a youthful indiscretion\u2019<\/p>\n

Crown prosecutor Lexie Glaser asked for a sentence of 2.5 years in jail. <\/p>\n

She said, given Owen\u2019s age at the time, he was entitled to a discount for youth, however, she asked the judge to temper it as the offending wasn\u2019t a case of \u201cyouthful indiscretion\u201d. <\/p>\n

She suggested 15%.<\/p>\n

Owen\u2019s counsel, Richard Barnsdale, asked for an end point of two years which would allow the judge to consider home detention, instead of jail time.<\/p>\n

He accepted the 15% for youth, but pushed for another 15% for factors including being on strict bail.<\/p>\n

Owen had also tried to start rehabilitation – various psychologists\u2019 reports stated that a young person\u2019s brain was still developing when they were 17 and 18 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has moved on now, at the age of 22 … he\u2019s got a good job, he is stable, is working, and there are no signs of a continuation of these sorts of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the judge asked him about making an emotional harm reparation payment, Barnsdale said Owen could pay $50 a week up to $5000.<\/p>\n

But Glaser took exception to Owen getting any credit for his sentence for the money, as it wasn\u2019t a voluntary offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have here is a defendant who continues to dispute the offending,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a voluntary offer of responsibility and is not a voluntary offer of reparation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The judge said that while he agreed, he still wanted the money to be available should the victim accept the payment.<\/p>\n

However, as the judge was about to issue his sentence, he realised that he couldn\u2019t issue Owen a sentence any heavier than community detention due to him being either 17 or 18 at the time of the offence. <\/p>\n

Under New Zealand law, a person aged 17 can only receive a jail sentence if they are convicted of a charge carrying a minimum prison sentence of 14 years.<\/p>\n

The judge noted the Crown was unable to prove exactly how old Owen was at the time, but he was at least 17.<\/p>\n

Therefore, he sentenced Owen to four months\u2019 community detention, with a 7pm to 4am curfew, 12 months\u2019 intensive supervision, and ordered him to pay $5000 emotional harm reparation at $50 per week.<\/p>\n

Judge Marshall also ordered Owen to complete a healthy relationships programme and not to associate or contact the victim.<\/p>\n

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He would also call her and play the videos to her, so they could both see them. Owen\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7127,806,33523,33524,10808,6846,33527,33526,6868,33525,5158,111,43,139,69,28703,25813,15147,5763,17703,6100,61,24927,13506,1524,102,4741],"class_list":["post-36180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-age","tag-as","tag-ashley","tag-avoids","tag-crown","tag-disputes","tag-encounters","tag-exact","tag-girl","tag-hefty","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offending","tag-owen","tag-prove","tag-sentence","tag-sexual","tag-still","tag-to","tag-unable","tag-underage","tag-waikato","tag-with","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}