On 2 April 2026, 1News reported:
Former NZME Executive Who Hired Underage Girl for 'Sexual Services' Named
Gregory Hornblow suppression lapses: Former exec convicted of receiving underage sexual services
The former media executive who admitted paying a 14 year-old for sex and fought to keep his name secret can now be named.
Gregory Rex Hornblow was sentenced in March at the Auckland District Court to 10 months home detention and ordered to pay reparation payments of $3000 to the teenager.
The 60 year-old was the chief executive of One Roof - the property arm owned by the New Zealand Herald publisher NZME - when he was charged with receiving commercial sexual services.
How can he be charged with commercial sexual services? The girl was a 14-year old. She isn't old enough to consent, which makes it sexual abuse of a minor.
Judge Maxwell refused Hornblow's application for a discharge without conviction, as well as his permanent name suppression.
A law change last year meant the victim had to agree to the man's identity remaining suppressed, which Judge Maxwell said she did not.
She gave discounts for his guilty plea, remorse, and reported good character.
He was convicted and sentenced to 10-months of home detention as well as the $3000 in emotional harm reparations.
The headline 1News has used is also very problematic. Hornblow did not HIRE an underage girl for 'sexual services'. The pedophile paid to rape an underage girl. Claiming the victim was providing sexual services, as though the transaction were akin to a catering arrangement, shows clear media bias in favour of the sexual abuser. As though the quotes around sexual services were sufficient to signal to readers that something dark had occurred.
Furthermore, Hornblow was still chief executive of OneRoof, the property arm owned by the New Zealand Herald publisher NZME, when he sexually abused a child. Claiming he was a former NZME executive officer when he "hired" a child for sexual services is misleading framing.
What Hornblow did isn't a consensual or commercial arrangement that strayed into illegality at the margins. He sexually exploited a child while he was working for NZME. It is plainly written under New Zealand law that children cannot consent to sexual activity. That is the entire point of the legal age of consent.
The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 does not merely regulate commercial sex with minors, it criminalises it, with a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment, precisely because the concept of a minor selling sexual services is a legal fiction. There is no transaction. There is only abuse of a minor.
On 9 March 2026, RNZ reported:
Former Auckland executive who paid teen $1000 for sex, sentenced to 10 months home detention
A former Auckland executive has been denied permanent name suppression, but still cannot be named after being convicted of receiving "commercial sexual services" from a person aged under 18.
The executive admitted to the charge in November 2025.
He was sentenced in the Auckland District court on Monday to 10-month home detention and ordered to pay $3,000 in emotional harm reparations, however, an appeal from his lawyer means he still can't be named.
The man's lawyer, Graeme Newell sought a discharge without conviction, saying his client believed the girl involved to be 17-years-old.
In reality, she was 14.
The facts reported are damning enough. Judge Kathryn Maxwell found that Hornblow enticed the victim with full knowledge that she was too young to be offering commercial sex services. Despite this, Hornblow had extended name suppression. He described himself, in his own words, as a sugar daddy, a term that carries its own ideological freight, domesticating what is in practice grooming.
Most damningly of all, he actively coached the girl to tell investigators that he had not paid her for sex. This isn't merely a man who made an error of judgement. This is a man who, having abused a child, then attempted to suborn her into silence in order to escape accountability.
The sentence handed down by the Auckland District Court was ten months' home detention and $3,000 in emotional harm reparation. Ten months at home. Three thousand dollars. We often see similar light sentences whenever a prominent man is caught abusing their position of power.
On 18 December 2025, RNZ reported:
Jevon McSkimming Avoids Jail Sentence Over Possession of Child Sexual Exploitation Material
Disgraced former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming has avoided jail time, instead sentenced to nine months home detention, at the Wellington District Court this afternoon.
He pleaded guilty in November to three representative charges of possessing objectionable publications, namely child sexual exploitation and bestiality material.
In handing down his sentence, Judge Tim Black declined to order McSkimming's registration on the child sex offending registry, as his risk to the community was assessed as low.
His lawyer Letizea Ord told the court he was "very remorseful", and had described himself as "deeply ashamed".
In front of an almost-full public gallery, McSkimming stood in the dock, shifting his weight, and nodding occasionally as the judge handed down his sentence.
From a starting point of three years, Judge Black applied reductions of fifty percent for the early guilty plea, rehabilitation efforts, the steps he had taken at his home to prevent reoffending, as well as prior good character and remorse.
"You've done a lot of good in the community, as well as the bad reflected in this offending," he told McSkimming.
He arrived at a sentence of nine months per charge home detention, to be served concurrently, noting his career made him a "prime target for serious violence" in prison.
To appreciate quite how inadequate this outcome is, consider the comparative landscape of New Zealand sentencing for offences against children. In December 2025, disgraced former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming received nine months' home detention for possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material.
These sentences are themselves the subject of legitimate criticism, but the point is this: Hornblow, who did not merely view images but physically abused a child and subsequently attempted to obstruct justice, received a sentence that sits comfortably within the range reserved for possession offences. The deterrent signal sent to would-be predators in positions of power could scarcely be more accommodating.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Hornblow's professional standing and political leanings played a role in the leniency extended to him. The sentencing courts in this country have shown, with troubling consistency, a disposition to treat the fall from privilege, the lost executive salary, the reputational damage, the cancelled LinkedIn profile, as a form of punishment in itself, deserving of mitigation.
The child whose exploitation Hornblow was convicted of receives only $3,000 and the knowledge that the justice system judged her harm to be worth ten months of inconvenience in a comfortable home.
New Zealand has a problem with how it sentences child sexual offenders, and it has a problem with how the media frames their offending. Both failures serve the same function: they maintain the fiction that abuse perpetrated by men of standing is a different order of transgression from abuse perpetrated by those without it. It isn't. The child does not experience the abuse differently because her abuser holds an executive title. The harm is the same.
Until our courts and our newsrooms are willing to say so plainly, deterrence of this sort of crime will remain a fiction, and the impunity a reality.
