Chief Censor Bill Hastings and Hardcore Pornographer Steve Crow

In a press release issued last year to explain why his Office had banned the Otago University student magazine Critic, which featured a controversial essay on drug rape, Chief Censor William (Bill) Kenneth Hastings described a male pornographer whose profile was also featured in the magazine, as one “who makes a living by filming the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal.” [1]. The man concerned has done well financially making obscene hard-core pornography, just like flamboyant 50-year old New Zealand pornographer Steve Crow – dubbed NZ’s “Porn King” by the media. Crow became infamous in 2002 for seeking unsuccessfully to use the facilities of the Waikato District Hospital to film the birth of his aspiring ‘porn star’ Nikki’s baby, so he could incorporate the birth scene into his sleazy porn film entitled “Ripe” [2].

Crow, who recently failed in his bid for the Auckland mayoralty, continues to promote his most visible enterprise Erotica Adult Lifestyles Exhibitions (“SeXpo”),  promoting it via his “Boobs on Bikes” parades of topless pornstars in various New Zealand cities. He boasts that his business is the largest supplier of “adult” explicit sex publications (DVDs etc.) to the New Zealand commercial market. According to a North & South report, [in 2002] “he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and his company Vixen Direct” faced no less than “135 criminal charges” – pleading guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – relating to the distribution of “objectionable” publications [3]. A Listener report in 2004 notes that he remains perfectly happy to be called a “pornographer” and a “sleazeball” [4]. He is managing director of the so-called “adult entertainment” (porn) empire CVC Group Ltd.

Hastings, like Crow, also has a job dealing with hard-core porn sleaze, earning about $190,000 a year censoring publications featuring the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal, paedophilia, sexual violence, necrophilia, bestiality, sex involving human faeces, and other “objectionable” content. However, one key difference between the two men is that Crow invests his own money into making, watching and selling degrading moral filth, while Hastings gets paid by the tax-payers of New Zealand to watch and re-watch it and study it in excruciating detail.

Hastings, dubbed “Mr Clean” in a recent NZ Herald article [5] and his dream team, predominantly women, operate from a plush office on the 4^th Floor of BP House in Wellington, with spectacular commanding views over the harbour. They write lengthy reports that provide the legal justifications for why this hard-core porn garbage can be viewed by those 18 years of age and older – classifying most of it as serving the purpose of “entertainment” – serving the purpose of adult sexual titillation etc. Hastings would maintain that by writing these lengthy reports detailing the finer nuances of all these explicit and degrading sex acts, etc. they are strictly fulfilling the requirements of the legislation by viewing and classifying the publications.

Hasting’s liberal attitude towards hardcore porn, which he has been assessing since 1989, was recently highlighted to readers of the NZ Herald when it was reported that he wouldn’t kick up much of a fuss if he caught his “kids”, including 13-year old son Toby, viewing hardcore porn [5]. The Society has argued that parents who truly care for the moral well-being of their children should avoid allowing them to socialise with the children of parents who demonstrate the same kind of laissez-fair attitude towards pornography demonstrated by Hastings. While his casual attitude to “gay porn” may be understandable, as he is “an openly gay man” in a relationship with a gay man Jeremy Baker of Wellington, the Society contends that the vast majority of New Zealand parents would vehemently oppose their children accessing such toxic and corrosive material.

According to Hasting’s Deputy, Ms Nicola McCully, an openly middle-aged lesbian woman, over 80% of the time spent by the 15 classification officers in the Office is in dealing with commercial DVDs and videos that focus on explicit sex – much of it involving sexual violence and the demeaning, degrading and dehumanising of women. “The misogyny in these sex tapes is very depressing,” McCully reports, and yet almost every one of them is approved by her and Bill for the adult sex titillation market. “Each censor watches the day’s assigned publications in individual viewing booths… I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t found something we’d seen arousing at some stage,” she confessed. “Outside the row of booths is a desk piled high with porn DVDs with titles such as “Buttman Returns” and “All Oral 6”, the report notes [6]. McCully, has her fair share of arousing lesbian sex tapes to “watch closely”. Hastings, who claims he is “not a fan of gay porn”, is required as Chief Censor to watch all gay porn that may possibly require excisions or require banning.

The Press [7] reports that Hastings has a large stretch of tapa (Polynesian) curtain cloth strategically positioned behind his work desk. It serves more than the function of sending the PC-message from this “high-ranking public servant” in his early 50’s that he has “a natural empathy for indigenous people.” It is drawn across his window each time he watches explicit sex DVDs and videos so that “workers in the adjacent building” are unable to see the pornography that regularly plays in his office. It was erected in response to complaints received by his Office from neighbours exposed to his diet of sick and morally corrupt explicit porn.

Hastings loves the job so much that last year he stated to the media “he would ‘kill’ for another term as Chief Censor” [8]. McCully loves her “dirty job” too [6]. They both appear to enjoy showing explicit sex material to reporters and high ranking public servants and shocking them. The Press [7] reports that McCully does at least provide warnings of the explicit sex “but nothing prepares you for the onslaught of appendages and orifices, and the frenzy of sexual activity conducted by a group of four men and two women” (on the DVD viewed).

Yes: hardcore is truly addictive for some middle-aged adults and it desensitises those over-exposed to it. It is noteworthy that Mr David Haines was Australia’s Deputy Chief Censor for approximately 13 years to 1993-4. By 1998, he had become involved in the business of producing of X-rated (erotic) films which are illegal to sell in all Australian States, although not the two Territories. Some have predicted that Hastings, whose had almost a decade immersed in the porn trough, may make a similar career move to Haines after he is finally removed from his statutory position as Chief Censor by the Minister.

Almost every one of the hard-core porn DVDs and videos produced by Steve Crow that have been submitted to Hasting’s Office, have been passed without cuts (excisions)  being required prior to their release onto the adult (R18) home titillation ‘entertainment’ market. When the Society successfully sought “leave” from Hastings to have one of the regular explicit sex videos that was being marketed by Crow via his company website, reclassified, and succeeded in getting it banned, Crow was outraged. He even wrote to the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. George Hawkins, to complain bitterly about the Society’s actions. Hastings conceded in his Office’s reclassification decision that seven significant excisions should have been made to the publication by censors, to remove degrading explicit sexual content, but these had been overlooked when it was first classified [3]. Crow who bragged to reporter once that his I.Q had once been measured at 148, [9] chose not to make the seven excisions, so the video had to be banned. He’s at least bright enough to know that cutting out the worst degrading sleaze from porn does would not have helped sales. It was not an economic option for him at the time.

Returning to the matter of the drug rape magazine … the Society applied for a banning order against Critic, just days after it was published and began to be distributed around Otago University and on the city streets of Dunedin. It argued in its comprehensive submission to Hasting’s Office that Critic tended to “promote and support” drug rape and was therefore “objectionable”. To the credit of Hasting’s Office it was banned for the juxtaposition of a “positive profile” [1] of a porn merchant with the offending drug rape article. It agreed with the Society that the publication as a whole tended to “promote and support” sexual coercion via drug rape and was therefore “injurious to the public good”.

The Society, while pleased with Hasting’s decision to ban the publication, pointed out the gross inconsistency of the Office in this decision. ‘In the light of this decision, why’, it asked in a press release, ‘had Hastings earlier classified rape films like Baise-Moi, Irreversible and Visitor Q for release into public cinemas by arguing that the explicit, gratuitous and degrading images of rape and sodomy contained in them served the “public good” by providing an “antidote against rape”?’ Furthermore, ‘why had Hastings accepted arguments from the films’ distributors based on so-called “artistic merit” to justify screening lengthy and explicit scenes involving brutal sexual violence, while banning Critic?

At least one senior MP, Peter Brown, Deputy Leader of the NZ First Party, has continued to call for the immediate removal of the Chief Censor and his Deputy by the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. Rick Barker, and their replacement by competent censors capable of correctly applying the censorship laws and reflecting family values. The Society knows of many other MPs, beside all those in the NZ First caucus, who support this call. Unfortunately the Minister finds no problem with dissemination of obscene and morally toxic filth via the Chief Censor’s Office, confirming this position in debate with Mr Brown, in parliament [10].

[Update: Chief Censor Bill Hastings resigned his position in 2010 to become a District Court Judge. On 21 June 2010, it was announced that Bill Hastings was to be appointed a District Court Judge. His Honour Judge Hastings was sworn in at Wellington on the 9th of July 2010.Bill Hastings was Chief Censor for 11 years and replaced Kathryn Paterson. During that period, promoter of hardcore pornography, Stephen (Steve) Peter Crow had a running feud with Chief Censor Hastings over importing porn DVDs (ref. 11)].

References

[1] Otago University Students’ Magazine Critic Banned.
Wednesday, 1 February 2006. Press Release: Office of Film and Literature Classification
“…The Classification office decided that the magazine is injurious to the public good because it places an instructional drug-rape article beside a positive profile of a man who makes a living by filming the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal…

“The magazine’s claimed ‘theme of offensiveness’ never discusses the nature of offensiveness, and does not acknowledge the ability of articles appearing to endorse sexual violence and misogyny to cause injury to the public good,” added Hastings.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0602/S00002.htm
Diary of a Drug Rapist. Critic Te Arohi, Issue 23, September 19, 2005.

[2] Report: Steve Crow’s Erotica Sleaze Banned.
Press Release: Society For Promotion Of Community Standards Inc.
Wednesday 23 August 2006

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0608/S00276.htm

[3] “The People Vs. Steve Crow,” by John Landrigan, North & South (Issue 207, June, pages 82-90). “Besides the porn baby [controversy], collectively he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and Vixen Direct [Ltd] faced 135 criminal charges last year. Crow pleaded guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – for the distribution of objectionable material … he still faces seven regulatory infringements to a law he does not agree with.”

[4] Mass market penetration, by Matt Nippert and Patrick Crewdson. The Listener, August 21-27, 2004, Vol. 195 No 3354.
http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3354/features/2449/mass_market_penetration.html

[5] The Taste Master by Derek Ching. Critic (NZ Herald supplement) Saturday October 13, 2003, pp. 12-14. See pp. 13-14:  “…he [Hastings] can’t see himself kicking up much of a fuss if he catches his kids with [“porn” or “gay porn”], so long as the material is legal.”
Also see: Chief Censor on “his kids” and porn watching
Tuesday, 16 October 2007, 9:49 am
SPCS Press Release: Society For Promotion Of Community Standards Inc.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0710/S00222.htm

https://www.spcs.org.nz/2007/chief-censor-hardly-fussed-if-his-kids-were-caught-watching-hard-core-gay-porn/#more-84

[6] Watching the Defectives by Grant Smithies Sunday Star-Times August 13, 2006. Hastings has stated: “… My staff get a diet of the worst, which is not healthy! The vast majority of commercial submissions [over 80% of the material submitted for classification]…are sexually explicit videos and DVDs [porn]. We also get lots of child porn sent to us…” Express (10-23 May 2006, pp. 12-13)].

[7] Censor and Sensibility, 4 November 2006 The Press.

[8] “He would ‘kill’ for another term as Chief Censor”
Thursday, 26 October 2006, 3:09 p.m.
Press Release: Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0610/S00297.htm
See interview with Chief Censor Bill Hastings Dominion Post (26/10/06, D3),

[9] Steve Crow, Sunday Star Times 29 July 2007.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4144586a24815.html

[10] Minister defends Objectionable and Obscene Filth
https://www.spcs.org.nz/2006/minister-defends-objectionable-and-obscene-filth/

[11] Master Censor Bill Hastings. Published 13 March 2015

“Steve Crow had a running feud with Chief Censor Hastings over importing porn DVDs. Crow reckoned Hastings was arrogant to deal with.”

http://thespinoff.co.nz/13-03-2015/my-life-in-tv-master-censor-bill-hastings/

See also: http://www.censor.org.nz/resources/history/2010.html