New Zealand businessman Ron Brierley stripped of knighthood over child porn charges
- Brierley faces 10 years in prison after being found with thousands of images of children being abused
- He is listed among New Zealand’s 100 wealthiest people with an estimated fortune of US$153 million
Ron Brierley last month pleaded guilty to three charges in an Australian court, sparking a rarely invoked procedure to strip him of the honour he received more than 30 years ago.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her intention was to remove the title from Brierley if he hadn’t written first to relinquish it. Ardern said Britain’s Queen Elizabeth had been informed, and that Brierley will longer be able to use the honorific “sir”.
“I think its a sad day for the children of New Zealand and, indeed, the world, when someone is found guilty of possessing such horrendous images,” Ardern told reporters. “It is only right that there are significant consequences for that because as a country, we have to reject anyone that thinks that is OK.”
Ardern said Brierley had been found with more than 1,000 images portraying children being abused, which had completely rewritten his history.
Brierley faces a maximum 10 years in prison when he is sentenced. He was caught with some images in his luggage at the Sydney International Airport in 2019 and authorities later found more at his Sydney home.
One of his guilty pleas relates to photographs of girls as young as two in sexually suggestive poses. Another relates to a data storage device found at his home that allegedly contained more than 1,600 images of child abuse. Brierley’s lawyer has disputed the number of images in question.
