Domestic attacks spur call for zero tolerance

Tauranga police are calling for zero tolerance of family violence after a spate of serious domestic-related incidents in the past week.

Three incidents involving men allegedly attacking other men, women and children prompted the call yesterday.

Police would say only that the attacks were domestic-related, but each is understood to have involved men lashing out at former female partners or the male partners of women related to them.

Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Turner, head of Tauranga's crime investigation bureau, said the incidents showed a warped tolerance of family violence that had to change.

"The fact is that New Zealand society accepts domestic violence," he said, warning that such violence accounted for more than half the murders in the country.

"It's time the public wakes up to this fact and starts reporting and taking a positive line to stamp it out."

Mr Turner said family violence spanned all ethnic and socio-economic groups and needed to be reported.

In the first incident, a 23-year-old man allegedly broke into a woman's house in Arataki at 4am on Wednesday and attacked her, another man and a 1-year-old child.

The woman and child were not seriously injured but the male victim received stab wounds.

The other incidents happened on Sunday.

A 31-year-old Papamoa man faces two charges of raping a woman, one of wounding her and another of wounding a man after an incident in the early hours.

In a separate incident, at 9.30am, a 38-year-old man allegedly attacked a 30-year-old man at a house in Bayfair, Mt Maunganui.

The 30-year-old received a deep laceration to his forehead that required hospital treatment.

The 38-year-old has been charged with aggravated burglary and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.