Kidnapping allegations preposterous, lawyer tells High Court in Rotorua

Photo/File

The complete and total answer to the charges Gene Karauria faces lie in her police interview, her lawyer says.

Making submissions on the 29-year-old's behalf in the High Court at Rotorua today, Roger Gowing said in that statement she had absolutely rejected allegations an intellectually impaired man had been tormented, tortured and brutalised while living in her home.

Karauira is standing trial with her partner Leneith Moeke, 36. Between them they face 25 charges relating to the man a psychologist confirmed could at times behave as a toddler.

The charges include kidnapping the impaired man by holding him without his consent, ill-treatment of a vulnerable adult and a range of assault-related matters including vicious physical attacks and binding him with ropes and a chain. Both have denied all accusations.

However, when the trial began on August 7 Moeke pleaded guilty to an additional charge of assaulting another person who'd been living with the couple.

Mr Gowing emphasised to the jury the impaired man had not been held captive or detained against his will, saying such assertions were preposterous and rubbish.

Countering the Crown's claim the couple were the man's caregivers, Mr Gowing said he was a boarder in the house, free to come and go as he pleased. He read a passage from Karauria's statement in which she said he was a grown man who didn't need to be looked after.

"Like any normal person he can make himself a kai [meal], it's what he does while we are at work," she'd said.

The lawyer contended this rebutted the Crown's claim that the man's food had been restricted to only one bread and noodles meal a day. He reiterated that Karauria had told her interviewer that the man liked to lie.

"His evidence demonstrates his ability to make up things," Mr Gowing said. This had been demonstrated when in his first police interview the man described Karauria as a 'good person, cool' but changed his tune in a second, during which he'd levelled the brutality and torture allegations.

Justice Rebecca Edwards will sum up tomorrow before the jury retires to consider its verdict.