Court told of battle to see daughter

Police at the Otara house where Patricia Joseph was living with Joseph Proude and Here Teinakirai. Photo / Dean Purcell

A mother has told a court she was turned away and sworn at when she tried to visit her intellectually disabled daughter at the Otara house where the daughter was allegedly beaten by her caregivers and left to die.

Teinakore Joseph went to see her daughter Patricia Joseph at the home of Joseph Proude, 47, and Here Teinakirai, 53, shortly after she started living with them in October 2006, but was told Patricia didn't want to see her.

Ms Joseph said Teinakirai came out and said she wasn't allowed to see her daughter. Proude arrived home and an argument erupted.

"I told them I wanted my daughter back," Ms Joseph told the High Court at Auckland.

Proude and Teinakirai are on trial accused of Patricia Joseph's manslaughter and of assaulting her while she lived with them between October 2006 and when she died in January 2008.

Her body was found in the Wairoa River, Clevedon, on January 20, 2008, wrapped in sheets and weighted down by a rock.

The Crown alleges she died as a result of the couple assaulting her and could have lain dead or dying on their bathroom floor for up to a week.

Proude has admitted a charge of offering an indignity to human remains, relating to the disposal of her body. Teinakirai denies the charge.

Ms Joseph said she didn't see her daughter again until a few months later, in early 2007, sitting in a car outside a post shop in Otahuhu. "I said hello, and gave her a kiss."

Michael Kan, representing Proude, asked why she didn't call police if she was worried. Ms Joseph said it was because Patricia needed to be kept apart from her other daughter who had assaulted her.

"I was told she was old enough to make her own decisions," she said.

Mr Kan questioned her as to why she didn't alert her daughter's case worker if she thought she was living in an unsafe environment.

She replied her other daughter, Debbie, dealt with that because she had been the main carer. She said she did visit a social agency in Otara but she "didn't get the help" she needed from them.

Yesterday the jury visited the Ferguson Rd house where Ms Joseph died and the site where her body was pulled from the river.