Flawless grooming belies the horror

The young woman in the witness box of the Auckland High Court's Courtroom 6 looks like the kind of person most of us would choose for a neighbour. She's well-groomed, with her tinted red hair in a high ponytail held together with a pink hair tie.

Her lipstick is glossy pink, the make-up edging her blue eyes is flawless. It's only when you glance down that you notice the scar snaking out from under her turquoise blouse and running right down to her hand. It's wide, puckering in towards the bone in places and fading purple now. When she takes the Bible before giving her evidence, it almost slips from her weakened hands.

Over in the dock "Tonie" Dixon, the man accused of hacking at her neck, slashing off one of her hands and mutilating the other, is practically invisible.

For the entire time his former girlfriend, Simonne Butler, gives evidence, Dixon bends himself almost double so she cannot see him.

This is the final chapter in the story of a young woman who liked riding horses, studied the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses to please her nana, had big ambitions and got in with the wrong people. Today she wears a fashionable tiger-print handbag, a flowered turquoise and white skirt with matching high- heeled, cork-soled sandals, beige camisole with a black-and-white necklace and dainty, matching antique turquoise earrings.

She "fell in love" with Dixon after at first thinking him a loser. She thought with love, kindness, patience she could change him.

Today she is sitting here in the witness box defending him.

Throughout, Butler fights to keep her dignity intact and minimise the impact of the drug P, on both herself and Dixon. A court-supplied support woman sits behind her and escorts her during the breaks. A witness for the defence, she spends much of the lunch period with barrister Barry Hart, who is defending Dixon.

Only when cross-examined by Richard Marchant, for the Crown, do the traces of a descent into real horror begin to show.

Little by little Marchant cajoles fragments of evidence out of her: the black eyes and cuts she received from Dixon who was then her lover; his paranoia over the police he thought were "surveillancing" him from patrol cars, helicopter, satellites, even through bugs inserted under his skin.

"Were you scared of him?"

"Something would go wrong and he'd flip out, yelling, screaming ... It took me a while to admit to myself he connected [physically] with me," says this woman who is careful to protect her attacker. "I guess I was in a domestic violence situation."

Then there was the pregnancy in June - after Dixon "sleazed his way into my bed" - which she terminated in September. For that she had her hair cut off.

Asks Marchant: "I take it you didn't want your hair cut off?"

Butler hoots, half laugh, half snort of disbelief, "No, no."

Even on the night she nearly died, Butler says, "I don't so much remember being attacked but I can remember my hands going, looking at them ... there was so much screaming and blood and silver ... "