Photographs Ruled Not Indecent

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32167, 10 December 1969, Page 34

Photographs Ruled Not Indecent

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 9. Photographs bought by an Upper Hutt spinster through an advertisement in the magazine “Informer” were not indecent, Mr W. McAlevay, S.M., held in a reserved decision in the Upper Hutt Magistrate’s Court today.

He dismissed charges against Harry Tetlow, aged 51, a moulder, who had pleaded not guilty to selling indecent photographs and possessing indecent photographs for sale. The Magistrate said the complainant, Patricia Bartlett, a 41-year-old schoolteacher answered an advertisement offering “exclusive figure studies” at $5 a set. The source was an Upper Hutt box number. She received 12 photographs of unclad and semi-clad females. “The 12 photographs supplied to this woman were not indecent —11 were admitted not to be, and the twelfth I find was not,” said Mr McAlevey. The definition of indecency in the Iriidecent Publications Act included the depicting' of sex,> horror, crime, cruelty or violence in a manner injurious to the public good, he said. “This was a straight-out photograph of a nude female, who was not in a suggestive pose.” Mr McAlevey said that during the evidence it was suggested that “we live in a permissive society.” “I find it is a meaningless phrase, and a potentially harmful phrase if it suggests the courts should bend down and permit immorality. Par-

ents who bring up young children these days are entitled to be protected from the suggestion that we live in a permissive society.” The Magistrate said that some of the photographs Tetlow possessed were indecent, but the evidence had not gone far enough to prove they were for sale. He withdrew interim orders suppressing the names of Tetlow and the complainant, and refused anorder that, had been sought for destruction of the photographs.