Harrison and the victim had been in an on-again, off-again, relationship for about two years with no children together.
They weren’t living together and there had been several family harm incidents between them reported to police.
Harrison, heavily intoxicated at the time, entered the woman’s house just before 10pm. He woke her up, questioned her about being pregnant, accused her of being unfaithful and verbally abused her. Then he took to her with his fists, punching her in the head several times causing her to fall out of bed. He kicked her about the body and punched her numerous more times in the head.
The force of Harrison’s blows was “hard”, the woman said in a victim impact statement for the court.
After those assaults, she crawled to the kitchen looking for her phone but realised Harrison had it. She asked for it back but Harrison kept pushing her up against a fridge, shouting at her.
At some point she picked up a small steak knife that was on the kitchen table but Harrison grabbed it off her. She hit him with a toy until he dropped the knife and then she threw a beer bottle at him, suffering a small cut to her hand from the knife in the process.
The woman grabbed her phone, which Harrison had dropped, ran to her bedroom and phoned police.
Harrison left the property before returning with a family member for a short time. Officers found Harrison in the woman’s vehicle, stopping him just outside her house. He was detained under a police safety order and taken to the Ruatōria police station.
An ambulance had to be called for the woman, whose hand wouldn’t stop bleeding. She was taken to Gisborne Hospital. She needed stitches to a small cut in her little finger, which was also fractured.
She also suffered soreness to her head, neck, and stomach.
Given the agreed summary of facts, it was obvious much of what Harrison initially told police about the incident were lies, Judge Cathcart said Harrison falsely claimed the victim let him into the house and that they had argued while eating together. He accused the woman of attacking him with the knife.
In submissions, Crown prosecutor Michael Blaschke said the home invasion element of the offending was a serious feature of the case.
Counsel Alistair Clarke said it was accepted that while the woman’s injuries were not serious, they weren’t insignificant.
For the lead assault charge, the judge set a sentence starting point of 15 months’ imprisonment, uplifting it by a month for the charge of being unlawfully in a building.
There was a further month’s uplift to mark Harrison’s previous relevant convictions, which were mainly for family violence, the judge said.
He gave Harrision discounts for his guilty pleas and for time spent on electronically-monitored bail.
Reaching a notional end sentence of 10 months imprisonment, the judge said he had searched a pre-sentence report for any other possible mitigating factors but couldn’t find any.
Police and Corrections staff had serious concerns for the safety of his new partner, which was why her address was deemed an unsuitable place for him to serve home detention.
Authorities were also concerned about the safety risk Harrison might pose to his children from previous relationships. There was some suggestion he might have suffered a mental health condition but insufficient information for it to be considered a mitigating factor, the judge said.
He noted the pre-sentence report writer’s comment that Harrison had no remorse and continually denied his actions. He had been exited from the Family Harm Intervention Court on the charges, which was “no wonder”, the judge said. Harrison was obviously “only trying to pretend to participate in order to benefit” from that process.
