The complainant has accused her ex-partner of multiple sexual and violent offences in the short time they were together.
The complainant has accused her ex-partner of multiple sexual and violent offences in the short time they were together.
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.
The man, who says the alleged offending never happened, has name suppression to protect the complainants’ identities
The complainant is undergoing cross-examination in a jury trial in the Wellington District Court today
A woman who has accused her ex-partner of multiple sexual and violent offences, as well as encouraging her 11-year-old son to kill himself, has spoken of the many loving messages she sent to him, even just days before they broke up.
The complainant said messages to her ex about how he was “the best thing that’s happened to me” were an effort to keep the peace.
She made the comments on the second day of a jury trial in the Wellington District Court, where her ex faces numerous charges for rape and other sex offences, strangulation, assault, making an intimate visual recording, and inciting or counselling suicide.
The trial is before Judge Peter Hobbs and a jury of five women and seven men. File photo / Juan Zarama Perini
Defence lawyer Clare Stanley yesterday told the jury that aside from one incident where her client took a photo of the complainant on the toilet, he denies all the allegations.
Stanley said the alleged incidents “simply did not happen” and this was largely a “he said, she said” situation with “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.”
The trial is being heard in the Wellington District Court.
Yesterday the court heard descriptions of numerous alleged incidents, including an occasion where the complainant said her partner pushed her and ripped off the necklace she was wearing.
She said her 11-year-old son then grabbed a knife to defend her, before breaking down crying and saying he hated his life and wanted to kill himself.
The woman said the defendant then began taunting the child, saying he would help him kill himself, that he was a mistake and unwanted by the family, and that he would drop him off at a cliff.
Today the jury heard her describe another alleged incident, in which she said the defendant overpowered her and raped her, strangling her at the same time. She said she was nearing unconsciousness and could hear her son yelling outside the door, and the defendant yelling “Shut up, just wait til I finish.”
She said in her police video interview she cried most of the night after that incident.
Under questioning by the Crown, the complainant read out some of the messages sent between herself and the defendant, many of which referred to love.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me as well ... you mean so much to me,” she wrote in one message in early August 2023.
“You’re an amazing dad and partner and I’m so lucky to have you babe,” she said in another, days before they broke up.
She told the Crown at the point she was sending some of those messages the relationship had already begun to go bad, with the defendant allegedly becoming controlling and jealous.
The latest message was sent after multiple alleged incidents of rape and violence.
“It was getting substantially worse,” the complainant said. “I, particularly, was having to send and say things to keep the peace at that stage.”
Stanley began her cross-examination of the complainant today and will continue tomorrow.
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.
