A woman has accused her ex-partner of multiple sexual and physical offences. Photo / 123rf
A woman has accused her ex-partner of multiple sexual and physical offences. Photo / 123rf
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 page.
He is also alleged to have told the child he would help him kill himself after the boy threatened him with a knife.
The man, who says the alleged offending never happened, has name suppression to protect the complainants’ identities.
A man accused of encouraging a child to kill himself after the boy allegedly brandished a knife at him in his mother’s defence is on trial this week for multiple sex and violence charges, as well as counselling suicide.
The Hutt Valley defendant denies 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, who has name suppression to protect the identities of the complainants, is on trial before a jury of five women and seven men in the Wellington District Court.
He has admitted one charge of making an intimate visual recording, but has pleaded not guilty to 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, said the defence case is that the incidents relating to the charges “simply did not happen”.
She said this case was largely a “he said, she said” situation and there were “two very contrasting versions of events”.
“What the complainant says is not true,” she said in her brief opening remarks to the jury. “Her believability, her credibility is what you need to focus on.”
Meanwhile Crown counsel Nicole Jamieson painted a grim picture in her opening address of a “short but intense relationship” littered with sexual violence, and control and jealousy issues.
She said the defendant, in the two or three months he was with the complainant, controlled who she saw and spoke to, what she wore, and who she was friends with, often becoming jealous and accusing her of infidelity.
The trial is before Judge Peter Hobbs and a jury of five women and seven men. File photo / Juan Zarama Perini
Jamieson said the Crown case was that for the first month of the relationship the man was respectful and calm, but things quickly changed.
She said he began doing sexual acts on the complainant in front of his and her children, including an incident where he allegedly put his hand down her pants while he was driving, despite the children sitting in the back seat.
She also described incidences of rape and sexual assault, saying on one occasion the defendant strangled the woman as he raped her.
“[The complainant] recalls hearing [her son] yelling and [the defendant] yelling back ‘shut up’.”
In her evidential police interview, which was played to the court, the complainant described an alleged incident from her birthday.
She had previously sent the defendant a picture of a pair of vibrating underwear, which he then went and bought as a birthday present, having two of the children present the gift to her in a brown paper bag, she said.
She said he told her the boys had bought her the present and that he joked that he didn’t know why they would buy her a sex toy.
They later went out with the children for a birthday dinner at a restaurant, where the defendant allegedly told her to go into the bathroom and put the vibrating device into the underwear, insisting when she said she didn’t want to. She said she complied because she did not want him to yell or become aggressive.
She said he turned the device on and it vibrated loudly. She asked him multiple times to stop but he continued playing with the functions on the device throughout the whole dinner with the children, including while she tried to speak to a waitress, she said.
The trial is being heard in the Wellington District Court next week.
When they got home, an argument started over a parenting decision, and she said he pushed her and ripped off the necklace she was wearing.
“[My son] has come up and grabbed a knife. He’s held it at [the defendant] and he was yelling ‘this is for touching my mum, don’t touch my mum’,” she said, adding the defendant taunted the boy, saying “just do it, just stab me”.
The complainant 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,” he allegedly 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.
“[He] just kept going at [my son] the whole time, telling [him] that I don’t want him around.”
She said the defendant told the boy he was a mistake, that the complainant should never have given birth to him, and that the family would be better off without him.”
She said she eventually managed to convince the defendant to go put the other child to bed, and she comforted her son as he cried for 20 minutes.
The Crown case is that the abuse ended when the complainant broke things off from the defendant with support and encouragement from loved ones.
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.
