KEY POINTS:
One of the hardest things to accept about Nia Glassie's story is that neighbours heard screaming and crying but did nothing.
The reasons for their silence are also disturbing. One neighbour, Rawhiti Simiona, saw Nia being spun on the clothesline until she flew off but didn't report it.
Neither did a young woman who had lived next to the defendants when they lived with William snr in the months before Nia died.
Both said outside court that domestic violence was so common in Rotorua they simply hadn't thought that much of it.
Mr Simiona said he did yell out about the clothesline but then went back inside.
He regrets not doing anything and he wishes he'd never seen it. He had to testify, he said, or he couldn't look his own kids in the eyes.
But it had just seemed like your normal domestic violence. This is a hard town, he said, and it can be a scary one.
A few blocks away from Frank St is an unattractive row of small mustard-coloured flats.
It was here, in James St, that Nia, her mother Lisa Kuka and boyfriend Wiremu lived for a while with Wiremu's sister Hoana, brother Michael and girlfriend Oriwa, and William snr, in a one-bedroom flat.
Next door lived the young woman witness who told the court she would see a grubby Nia outside in the cold and rain, on her own, playing in the dirt. It was winter. She would try to be kind and give her toys or some food, which Nia would grab and then flinch away.
She heard screaming and yelling and heard through the walls Nia being called a "little black bitch".
Later she told us Wiremu at times would hold her hand and call her bubba.
"He did show some kind of, like, he was looking after her. But I think that might have been 'cause me and my family were outside. It might have been a big front."
She said the scene next door was "heavy". She would see patched Black Power members come around and she had been warned by friends to stay away from them, and from the Curtis family, who were "nutty and crazy".
What did she mean?
"Ah, they don't care about anything. I don't think they got emotions, that's why they were telling me to watch out, to just be careful, watch your back."
She would often hide indoors.
Rotorua was full of horrible gangs, she said. She didn't tell anyone about Nia because she didn't want trouble.
"There was one time they had these mobsters [Mongrel Mob] turn up to their house threatening to kill the people inside.
"And I didn't think much of the screaming, just for the fact cause I screamed myself [as a child], you know.
"We knew there was some kind of abuse, we thought it was just verbal abuse but everyone I know goes through that."
She and her partner have moved away from Rotorua now, partly through guilt, partly for a clean break but also because she has a child and she doesn't want this life for him.
The Curtis brothers would "get theirs" in jail, she added.
"S**t yeah. The gang's not proud of what they did. They're really pissed off. She was only a baby and no gangs allow babies to get hurt."
For all the outcry at the time, Rotorua residents largely stayed away from court.
The trial got media coverage every day but it played out in the background to the election campaign and in a strange vacuum.
Politicians didn't take the opportunity to use the case to spell out policies which would tackle violence against children and tourists went off to hangi and mud pools, unaware.
The public gallery was mostly full of Lisa Kuka's relatives and William snr and his cronies, yet for four weeks, no one looked very angry, or even upset.
