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A former general surgeon has been caught with the largest collection of child exploitation material ever found in New Zealand, as well as videos of women being killed.
Stewart Alexander Metcalfe was today jailed for his crimes, described as the worst type imaginable, at a sentencing that brought the judge and others in court to tears.
He has gone to prison for seven years and eight months, with a minimum parole period of three years and 10 months, on charges linked to his possession and distribution of an “extensive library” of more than a million images and videos, some of which were described as “incomprehensible”.
They included child exploitation material, plus adult and snuff videos showing the violent abuse of women, including them being “hacked to death”.
Judge Jo Rielly and others in the Nelson District Court were brought to tears after hearing the monstrous impacts on the lives of two of the victims of an aspect of Metcalfe’s offending.
The judge made special mention of their bravery in coming to court, as they recounted harrowing details about how Metcalfe had taken their images off social media, doctored them and re-distributed them.
The heartbroken young women struggled at times to read their victim impact statements, while a group of other victims listened in remotely via an audio link to the court.
Metcalfe had earlier admitted three representative charges of knowingly possessing child exploitation material, a representative charge of causing harm by posting digital communication and three representative charges of making child exploitation material.
The police summary said there were 12 identified victims who had been targeted by Metcalfe, mainly schoolgirls aged between 14 and 17 at the time of the offending.
Metcalfe, described as a former general surgeon who, for reasons not clear to the court, had lost his job and then retrained in IT, had in some instances accessed the victims’ social media accounts and photographs, altered them and then uploaded them onto adult pornographic sites.
One of the victims said in court it was in May last year when Metcalfe’s treachery was discovered that she was faced with the worst realisation in her life.
She said learning that she and her friends had been publicly sexualised had led to her “darkest moments”.
“This is so hard to get my head around. It’s such a shock you could have done such a thing,” the young woman told Metcalfe as he was seated in the dock.
She said the humiliation, embarrassment and anger had consumed her, and the devastating effects meant she had been unable to work in public, through fear people would know who she was.
The second victim spoke of her disgust and the distress caused by Metcalfe’s actions and at times she had wanted the world to simply swallow her up.
Metcalfe had been a member since March 2020 of a particular adult website where he posted more than 400 images of unknown victims, under the profile name “JosephnMary”.
On May 11 last year, police received information that a number of young women’s pictures had been taken from social media sites and doctored with sexually explicit additions for reposting to adult websites.
Investigators traced the activity to a Nelson address - Metcalfe had moved from the town where the offending happened. That location has been suppressed.
Metcalfe was arrested on May 18 last year. A subsequent search of his home found the material on multiple hard drives and computers.
One external hard drive contained more than 18,000 folders with more than 1.2 million files of child exploitation material in the form of images, videos and gifs.
Another file labelled “gore” and “snuff” had videos of women being “brutally executed”.
A second hard drive contained a folder labelled “Insta” in which more than 2690 images were found, including the photographs used by Metcalfe to upload to the adult website.
In another file named “nudity”, Metcalfe had 187 images of the young victims’ social media photos which had been digitally altered so they appeared naked.
In March 2020, he uploaded a specifically labelled folder that contained photographs of the victims, including those in court today, which led to the representative charge of posting digital communication.
The photos were viewed 4687 times by other users of the site.
In January 2022, Metcalfe uploaded another folder labelled “New Zealand Insta TEENS paradise” which contained 15 pages of about 30 assorted photographs of the victims per page. Some of the photographs had been manipulated to include the heads of the victims, but their clothing had been digitally removed so they appeared naked.
Metcalfe then offered to provide the victims’ Instagram details to other users on the adult site so they could “contact them and view their profiles”, the police summary said.
These images were seen 87,048 times by other users of the website.
Offending 'beyond comprehension'
Police said the victims had as a result suffered “severe emotional harm”.
The lawyer acting for police, Jackson Webber, told the court today the trauma suffered by the victims would be life-long and was “as sobering as it gets”. He described their feelings of shame, humiliation and violation, and how they were left feeling sick, in danger and terrified.
Webber said the offending was beyond comprehension, including that the victims’ identities had made their way to a “very sinister, disturbing corner of the internet”.
He said Metcalfe knew he had a problem, but had also tried to deflect it by blaming it on his drinking, or the possibility he was on the autism spectrum.
Webber said Metcalfe’s insight into the offending appeared limited, and because he was at a high risk of re-offending, the community needed to be protected from him.
Defence lawyer Emma Riddell acknowledged the victims’ bravery in coming to court and said while there was nothing Metcalfe could say that would undo the harm done, he had reached a point where he knew he had to engage in treatment.
“For him, getting caught was a blessing,” she said.
“He sees this prison sentence as a way of getting the help he needs to be a better person and not the monster he acknowledges he’s become.”
Riddell said a series of reports revealed a consistent link between his own background, which included trauma and abuse he experienced as a child while he was being raised in a boarding school in Africa.
However, Judge Rielly said she needed to be satisfied there was a causative link when the experts had not found this to be so.
She said that despite Metcalfe’s childhood experiences he went on to train in a high-ranking profession, was intelligent and was from a financially privileged background. For a time he lived a pro-social life, but then something changed.
Judge Rielly broke down as she recounted hearing from the victims, including aspects which were suppressed by the court today, and which she said defied belief.
She hoped his sentencing would bring some degree of closure for them.
Metcalfe was given some credit for his guilty pleas, which spared the victims from a trial, but there was nothing about his personal circumstances that warranted any uplift.
As vulnerable as the victims were during the reading of their statements, their composure was regained as Metcalfe’s crumpled, and he began sobbing as Judge Rielly sentenced him.
At the end of hearing, the judge thanked Webber and Riddell for their professionalism throughout a particularly difficult case.
Anyone with concerns about their online security can access advice through Netsafe here: https://www.netsafe.org.nz/privacy-settings-on-social-networks/.
- By Tracy Neal
Open Justice multimedia journalist, Nelson-Marlborough
SEXUAL HARM
Where to get help:
If it's an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you've ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone, contact Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7:
• Call 0800 044 334
• Text 4334
• Email support@safetotalk.nz
• For more info or to web chat visit safetotalk.nz
Alternatively contact your local police station - click here for a list.
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