Hutt man not guilty of rape, encouraging partner’s child to kill himself

Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and descriptions of alleged sexual and physical offending. Helplines can be found at the bottom of the story.

• A man has been found not guilty of multiple sexual and physical offences against his partner, as well as a charge of encouraging her child to kill himself
• The man was acquitted after a jury trial in the Wellington District Court
• He pleaded guilty to making an intimate visual recording of his partner

A man accused of encouraging a child to kill himself and sexually violating the boy’s mother on multiple occasions has been found not guilty.

The Hutt Valley defendant, who has name suppression to protect the identities of the complainants, denied various incidents, including an allegation he used a remote-controlled sex toy on his partner against her will as she ate at a restaurant with her children, and that on another occasion he raped her as her child yelled at him through the bedroom door.

The defendant’s trial, before a jury of five women and seven men, started in the Wellington District Court last week, and ended this week with not guilty verdicts.

He had admitted one charge of making an intimate visual recording, but denied two further counts of the same charge, three of indecent assault, six of having an unlawful sexual connection, three of rape, two of assault in a family relationship, three of strangulation, and one of inciting or counselling suicide.

The defendant’s lawyer, Clare Stanley, told the Herald one charge of indecent assault was dismissed, and the man was found not guilty on each of the other remaining 19 charges after four hours of jury deliberation.

“The defence case was a challenge to the overall credibility of the complainant, and the defendant didn’t accept any of what was alleged,” Stanley said.

“Her evidence of a controlling relationship where she was regularly raped and strangled was completely at odds with the mostly loving and supportive messaging between the parties which the jury had access to.

The trial was before Judge Peter Hobbs and a jury of five women and seven men. File photo / Juan Zarama Perini

“It was the defendant’s case that it was a happy relationship up until the afternoon of the last weekend when trust issues reared their head and some nasty things were said by him. He could not explain why the complainant would make up such awful allegations against him.”

Stanley addressed one charge, in which her client was accused of encouraging the complainant’s 11-year-old son to kill himself.

According to the complainant, the defendant had pushed her and ripped off her necklace during an argument, and the boy had grabbed a knife and threatened the defendant in his mother’s defence.

The complainant said she convinced her son to drop the knife and he began crying.

“He’s been yelling ‘I hate my life, I wish I was dead, I’m going to go kill myself.’”

She said the defendant then came over, telling the boy he was a crybaby and he wasn’t surprised he got picked on at school.

“If you hate life that much I can help you kill yourself,” she claimed he said.

“[My son’s] become even more upset by that comment and said to me ‘Mum, this is why I don’t want to live, nobody wants me here.’ [The defendant’s] turned around and said ‘Do you want me to take you to a cliff? I can drop you there,’” the complainant said.

The man was found not guilty on this allegation.

Stanley today said the defendant “would never talk to a child like he was alleged to have spoken with [the boy]”.

“He and his family take mental health very seriously and he is very good with kids.”

Stanley said she asked the jury to consider the “little details” where the complainant might have been “embellishing or exaggerating what might seem like ‘side’ issues that painted the defendant in a bad light”.

“In a ‘she said/he said’ case like this, they needed to be sure that the complainant was telling the truth about the central allegations and that what the defendant had told the police couldn’t reasonably be true.”

The man earlier pleaded guilty to one incident where he had taken a photo of the complainant on the toilet. He is due for sentencing on that matter in December, and Stanley said she would be seeking a discharge without conviction for her client.

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.