KEY POINTS:
A woman accused of sexually violating her six-year-old son faced trial in Wellington District Court today.
The 41-year-old woman has name suppression to protect the identity of her children.
She is alleged to have performed oral sex on her six-year-old son and assaulted him and her nine-year-old son with a piece of timber between April and August last year, after the family moved to New Zealand from Tonga and before she was admitted to hospital for mental health reasons.
In court today the woman pleaded not guilty to sexual violation and two counts of assault with a weapon.
Crown prosecutor Tom Gilbert told the jury of seven men and five women during his opening statements consent was not an issue and the case came down to whether or not the jurors believed the sexual and physical assaults took place.
The woman's older son, now aged 10, gave evidence via a closed circuit television video link from another room in the court.
He told the court when his mother still lived with the family she had called him and his brother into his parents' bedroom and pulled his brother's pants down.
When he saw her "eating his brother's thingie" he had run from the room, he said.
On another occasion, his mother had hit him with a piece of timber "a lot of times" hurting him, he said.
The woman's husband, with the assistance of a translator, told the court today his wife had suffered from schizophrenia in Tonga and New Zealand and had been admitted to hospital because of it in August last year.
When they had been living in Tonga, at one stage the illness had caused her to burn the family's home down because she believed he was dead, he said.
The trial before Judge Susan Thomas is expected to run until Wednesday.
- NZPA
