Ex-cop: I’m not a predator
Aspiring lawyer admits sending texts to 13-year-old but denies misleading Law Society
Aformer police officer, twice acquitted of sexual violation charges, admits sending inappropriate texts to a 13-year-old girl but says he never misled the New Zealand Law Society as he attempts to embark on a career as a defence lawyer.
Ethan James Brown was found not guilty during a trial in the Auckland District Court in September 2012.
It was the second time the now 27-year-old was cleared of sexually violating two women.
After the verdicts, police began an employment investigation on Brown, who later resigned from the force and went on to study criminal law.
Yesterday in the High Court at Auckland before Justice Edwin Wylie, the Law Society, which has declined Brown a certificate of character, claimed the former constable misled it over the police investigation and text messages he sent to a young girl in November 2012.
Brown, who has been employed by the Public Defence Service (PDS) since January last year, denied misleading or deceiving the society in his application for admission as a barris- ter. He sent an email to it last year about his admission, to which the society replied it first needed to know of the findings of the police’s disciplinary matter, the court heard.
Brown replied: “I did not have any disciplinary matter with my former employer and I was not disciplined.”
He told the court yesterday that he was subject to an employment investigation but not a disciplinary matter and resigned from the police before any disciplinary action was taken.
But Law Society counsel Paul Collins alleged Brown misled the society.
“I wouldn’t accept that I was being untrue or dishonest,” Brown replied. “I wasn’t intending to be dishonest.”
Collins said Brown also failed to disclose the truth about a series of texts to a 13-year-old girl that had formed part of the police inquiry.
The court heard that 13 female complainants had made allegations against Brown.
He admitted exchanging messages with the 13-year-old but said he had thought she was older than 16.
However, Brown now accepts he “must have known after reading those text messages” that the woman was under 16. He also met the teen in an Auckland mall.
“I hadn’t seen those text messages for a very long period of time,” he told the court.
In the texts, Brown asked the teen for her name and age, which he later disclosed to police.
“I’m 13 till March, with a little sad face symbol,” Collins said the teen replied to Brown’s request.
“Sweet, all good eh — how was your day anyway?” Brown texted back.
“Haha it was pretty boring, my Nan dragged me around the mall,” the teen had replied.
In an affidavit, Brown also claimed: “It’s hard to remember exactly what was in my mind at the time, I thought she was over 16 at the time because she told me . . . She looked over 13 when I met her at the mall.”
He further said of the mall encounter: “She told me she was over 16 — I remember being told that.”
He told the court: “It’s seven years ago, I was immature, I don’t know what was going through my head.
“I must’ve known, my memory failed me.” Brown explained several times that he was “disgusted in my- self” but denied he was promoting a sexual relationship with the teen, which Collins suggested was “essentially a sexual grooming encounter”.
Further details in the texts were suppressed.
A second series of texts to another young woman occurred while Brown was on duty as a police officer, but Brown denied the claim he’d taken the woman back to his house and had a sexual encounter.
“I know how serious things are and how serious things were,” he said.
“I’m ashamed of the whole lot ... I’m not a predator.”
Brown’s lawyer, Peter Davey, said there has been no suggestion of any “repetition of the behaviour” while Brown studied law and after he began working for the PDS.
Brown’s criminal charges related to an alleged incident with a 20-yearold woman who had been a school friend. The woman said Brown held her down and sexually violated her at her home in late January 2010. Brown said that never occurred. Brown had also denied sexual accusations made by an 18-year-old woman he met on Facebook.
Justice Wylie reserved his decision.