Pebbles Hooper case verdict: Auckland celebrity convicted over OnlyFans sex videos

During a single-judge trial last September, Hooper pleaded guilty to violating a court order in July 2021 by posting about another influencer on social media and her blog. She pleaded not guilty to four other counts related to online posts about the man and three other men: a media personality, an artist she was barred from posting about under the court order, and an accused sex offender who could not be named and whom she outed on social media.

Judge Skellern later acquitted her of the charge against the media star and of intentionally violating the Suppression Act for the alleged sex offender, but found her guilty of twice violating the Harmful Digital Communications Act with the posts about her victim and the artist.

Hooper admitted during her trial to posting two clips of the intimate video with a man on OnlyFans in 2021, but insisted it was not with the intention of harming him by causing him serious emotional distress — a requirement for it to be considered a crime. She posted it behind a $100 paywall to keep fans from actually watching it, and she didn’t think anyone who viewed the video would be able to identify him because it was so narrowly cropped, she testified. The whole plot, she said, was designed to expose him as someone who was still anonymously following her on the explicit account, despite her asking him not to.

He testified that he sent her several messages asking her to remove the footage, but she told him to leave her OnlyFans page – and also threatened to post more videos and contact his employer. The videos were removed about two weeks after the first request, but only because OnlyFans closed her account following a police report.

When asked on the witness stand if she knew the posts would “hurt” the man, she replied: “You can’t keep being the victim and ruining other people’s lives because you’re just fragile… you’re an adult… I felt like I had to do that and you know, I proved my point.”

Passing sentence in the Auckland District Court today, Justice Skellern accepted the argument of Hooper’s defence lawyer Harrison Smith that a community service sentence would do more harm than good as she would likely be exposed to environments and people who could harm her.

Skellern inquired whether Hooper would be able to repair the emotional damage, but was told that the social media personality would lose her job following her conviction and would be unable to do so.

Smith had argued that Hooper was on a “crusade” to force social media influencers to be more “responsible” and that her actions were not intended to “promote her own interests.”

“As a social activist, she comments on issues such as racism and sexual and physical violence… admittedly, Ms. Hooper is confrontational and perhaps brash in her approach… which is understandable given that she began her career as a gossip columnist,” Smith said today.

“Behind the hard shell lies a person who suffered considerably…from persecution on social media, which ultimately led to her having to give up her work as a journalist.”

Smith argued that if individuals promoted their business interests by publishing their private lives on social media, they had to accept that doing so would expose them to criticism.

Judge Skellern said she would not elaborate on the decision to deny Hooper a discharge without conviction because she appeared via video link and the technology was not optimal.

In a written judgment released in November, Judge Skellern agreed with the prosecution that Hooper had intended to harm the victim, even though she had taken steps to conceal his identity in the posts.

“Whether many others would have recognized [him] is just one point to be taken into account,” the judge noted. “Her intention was to make him recognize himself and to cause him distress, with the ultimate aim of forcing him to take the steps she wanted him to take.”

The judge also rejected the defense’s argument that a “normal, reasonable person” would not have suffered serious emotional distress, given the claim that the explicit content was so brief that there was no risk of identification.

“I consider that the publication of this material without the consent of the other party, the refusal to remove it and in conjunction with the threat of contacting the victim’s employer would cause the normal, reasonable person to feel absolutely powerless in the face of the use of his or her image in this way and would suffer serious emotional distress,” the judge said.

Hooper was also found guilty of violating a 2019 court order via Twitter by writing the words “woman molester” over a screenshot of an artist’s artwork. The artist had already accused her of violating the Harmful Digital Communications Act against him, and she was subsequently ordered not to post his name or anything that could lead to his identification via his artwork.

Hooper testified that she did not intend to identify the artist with her comment. If she had, she would have “just named names.” Her attorney argued that the post did not identify the man because a viewer should know the artwork belonged to him. The judge disagreed, saying the post “clearly” violated the order.

However, the judge concluded there was insufficient evidence to find her guilty of knowingly violating the name-blocking ban by revealing the alleged sex offender. The man, a former acquaintance, was found guilty in 2014 and his name was not known at the time…

The prosecutors referred to her previous employment with the Herald as evidence that she should have known better than to post about a court case without checking whether there were any gag orders. Her lawyer successfully argued that she could not reasonably have known about the gag order and that her previous work as a journalist did not require her to know about court orders.

“Ms Hooper’s role in the New Zealand Heraldfor lack of a better description, was a gossip columnist,” the judge observed. “I do not accept that she was familiar with the Criminal Procedure Code and could therefore reasonably be expected to make enquiries about the current situation at the District Court.”

Prosecutors also failed to convince the judge that Hooper had breached the Harmful Digital Communications Act through a series of social media posts in 2020 aimed at confronting a media personality. Prosecutors argued that she had launched a concerted campaign to damage his reputation and cause him serious emotional distress by portraying him in a bad light.

“The number of positions is limited and they are mainly aimed at [the media personality’s] personal view of feminism,” noted Judge Skellern. “Ms. Hooper is free to present her own perspective… [the media personality] is, as described by the defence counsel, an adult professional who is a prolific social media user and uses it as a commercial platform. This is a matter in which Ms Hooper used free speech to [media personality’s] Position.”

The defendant, whose full name is Pebbles Maria Alice L’Estrange-Corbet-Hooper, is the daughter of Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet and Francis Hooper. Her parents founded the New Zealand fashion label WORLD together in 1989, shortly before the birth of their only daughter.

Hooper resigned from the Heraldwhere she was co-editor of Spy, in 2015 after there was an uproar over a tweet in which she claimed the deaths of an Ashburton mother and her three children were due to “natural selection”. Her death appeared to have been caused by a car that had been left running in her garage to keep the battery functioning. She later apologised for what she said were “careless” remarks.

Hooper’s sentencing hearing was originally scheduled for May. She appeared for that hearing via audio-video link from the United States after the court was informed a day earlier that she was abroad and had no intention of returning in time. Her virtual appearance was reluctantly approved by the judge, but Judge Skellern lost patience when it emerged that a critical psychological report had not yet been completed due to Hooper’s overseas travel.

“I wonder how seriously all this is being taken,” the judge wondered aloud. “The court should have been informed [earlier] she is not in the country – that is something that should have been said… This is really unsatisfactory when you consider that three victims are waiting for this matter to finally be resolved.”

Craig Captain is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has covered courts in three newsrooms in the United States and New Zealand since 2002.

Tom Dillane is an Auckland-based journalist covering local politics and crime, as well as sports investigations. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is deputy head of news.