Cardno's friend tells of drugs

The father and stepmother of a murdered Lower Hutt girl used grief, valium and cannabis to build a relationship with their dead daughter's friend, then employed her as a child prostitute, a court was told yesterday.

The friend, now 33, told the High Court at Wellington that her aunt and uncle took her to the house of Gary John Duffin and Sharyn Lee Hills when she was 12, following the disappearance of 13-year-old Karla Cardno in 1989.

Cardno was kidnapped, raped and tortured, before her killer, Paul Dally, beat her on the head with a piece of driftwood then buried her alive at a beach near Wellington.

Cardno's former friend told the court how one room of the Mt Victoria house in Wellington was "like a shrine, full of photos of Karla and the big teddy bear that was on her coffin".

While the witness talked with Hills and her aunt about Karla in the lounge of the Mt Victoria house, she recalled a scantily clad Asian woman in high heels sitting on the couch beside them.

After the visit, her aunt forbade her to see them again.

"She told me they ran a brothel and they were sick people," she told the court, where Duffin and Hills are charged with 10 counts of supplying three other minors with cannabis.

They are also together charged with four counts of sexually violating a 14-year-old girl.

Duffin faces an additional charge of sexual violation for a later incident at his brothel with the 14-year-old, allegedly showing her what to do before renting her out to a client in 1991.

Ignoring her aunt's advice, the witness met Duffin and Hills several more times.

She said that when she visited the brothel with a friend as a 13-year-old, after an attempt to cut her wrists, Hills gave her valium and cannabis.

"They told me I was lonely, depressed and needed love," she said.

Both girls passed out, with the witness waking to find a "big man, wearing a suit" leaving the room.

As a 15-year-old, she ran away to live on the streets, and began working as a prostitute for Duffin and Hills, she said. She worked for the couple for three years, until she left to work for herself, as a hostess for Japanese sailors.

The trial continues.

- NZPA