One of the women told him Nelson District Court during sentencing today, that she had been targeted online by the stranger for years and feared he would hurt her after receiving a message saying he would kidnap her and make her his “rape slave”.

“At that time I did not know who the perpetrator was. I feared for my safety everywhere I went,” she said.

Discovering her pictures on “disgusting” websites would stay with her forever.

“It will always haunt me,” she said in her victim impact statement.

Another victim, whose holiday photos had been taken from her social media page, manipulated and used to blackmail her, said it was horrifying to think that innocent pictures on Facebook had been turned into something so evil.

“I hope he understands the terrible harm he has caused. We will always remember him as a coward and a scoundrel,” she told the court.

“Addicted to porn” from a young age

Cottam was sentenced to seven years in prison with two representative counts of blackmail, one count of threatening grievous bodily harm, 11 counts of causing bodily harm by posting a digital communication, one count of knowingly making an objectionable publication, one count of possessing an objectionable publication and a another charge of failing to comply with a search.

The seeds of the crime date back to 2013, took hold in 2015 and continued until his arrest in 2022.

The 27-year-old, described as addicted to porn from a young age and with recognized “significant psychological difficulties”, downloaded images from his victims’ social media sites. He then superimposed offensive and sometimes sexually violent pornographic images over the photos accompanied by graphic and “nasty” text and then sent them back to the victims.

He sent some to a dark web porn site used by others to view and share material.

Other messages included images of group sex and forced sex, all to stimulate their victims to respond.

The main victim said that when she found out about the “disgusting websites” images of her appeared on, she was left with emotional scars, most likely for life.

“I will never know why you targeted me this way. I feel like I will carry these scars for the rest of my life.”

Cottam was described by police as a sufficiently competent IT expert to evade detection – until one day he was caught.

He was found by the police with more than 8000 objectionable images and videosincluding child exploitation material, on several devices he owned.

His attorney, Steven Zindel, said Cottam’s selfish and immature actions were the result of “the writing.”

“He told me, as horrible as it was to listen to the victim impact statements, a number of things stuck in his mind and I’m sorry he’s not covering them.

“He feels ashamed,” Zindel said.

Cottam’s mother, who sat in the back of the court, wept as Judge Jo Rielly credited her and Cottam’s father for standing by him.

Judge Rielly said Cottam’s offending fell into two different types, which included online abuse against victims known to him, plus others he did not know, as well as possession of child exploitation material against unidentified victims.

Eight of the 11 identified victims had direct links to him. The identities of the “countless” child victims of the sexually exploitative material are unknown, police said.

“Online Predator”

Police said Cottam used a large number of encrypted email addresses that masked the content of the service provider.

He visited websites available only on the dark web to access objectionable material and to hide his physical location.

He also used several VPN applications to hide his Internet Protocol (IP) address and installed a program known as Veracrypt on his computer to create encrypted and hidden storage caches.

Cameron said Cottam was an online predator who knew what he was doing was illegal and went to great lengths to cover his tracks.

He said he degraded his victims, isolated them and encouraged others to do the same while apparently being driven by their fear.

“It was a campaign of terror that had them looking over their shoulder for years.”

The contact with the identified victims was of an “extremely sexually explicit” nature that was degrading and graphic, Judge Rielly said, adding that some of the child exploitation material was too horrific to be read in court.

Cottam’s timeline of crime

The police summary of facts said he shared images depicting sexual abuse or videos with a “rape narrative”.

Over six years, he emailed his first victim from a variety of encrypted email accounts, initially asking her to view a link he sent to a pornographic website where a gallery had been created using more images of the woman, whose image had been superimposed with pornographic references. .

He threatened that if she did not respond to his email, he would “continue the online sexual abuse” by sharing the link with her friends and family.

He also sent sexually abusive messages and images through several different Instagram and Facebook accounts.

When the victim didn’t respond, the messages got worse, forcing the woman to delete her social media accounts and create new ones using an alias.

Cottam then emailed her asking her to send explicit images of herself by a deadline and he would leave her alone or his messages would “get worse” and share “personal and material information humiliating”.

He also threatened to implicate some of her friends and family.

When the woman did not comply with his demands, he used a fake name to share a screenshot of her social media profile with text threatening physical contact through sexually violent messages.

In January 2019, he then posted an image of the victim and a friend of hers on a certain website where users shared images and received altered images.

Later that year, Cottam’s emails took a turn for the worse, including threats to kidnap the victim and make her a “rape slave”.

He used similar tactics against the second victim and in October 2018 sent her a message from an Instagram account asking her to contact him or he would reveal sexualized photos of her to her parents. He followed up with another message with her parents’ work email addresses included in the subject line.

Cottam then began abusing a mother and daughter he knew, using the same tactics.

“No mother and no daughter should ever read what you composed and sent to them,” Judge Rielly said.

The offending against other victims was similar until police raided Motueka’s home in early 2022. He initially refused to provide the passwords to his phones and computers.

The police forensics unit accessed the devices in February 2022 and found more than 8,000 images and videos of objectionable material of some of the known victims and others who could not be identified.

Judge Rielly credited the victims with having the courage to speak in Cottam’s presence, while others were brave enough to write how they felt.

She hoped the sentence would help bring them some closure after it looked like they would be dragged through a trial.

Cottam pleaded guilty three weeks before he was scheduled to begin.

“What I hope you recognize is that none of them deserved this, but they will always live with it.”

From a starting point of a total of 10-and-a-half years in prison, Cottam received a cumulative sentence of seven years on all charges.

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and covered general news including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.