Woman with mental health issues admits being a naked troublemaker

The Christchurch Police Station reception area, where the woman completely undressed and refused to put her clothes back on. Photo / Herald

The court is struggling to work out what to do with a 29-year-old female mental health patient who keeps on causing trouble - sometimes naked.

The woman's life has drifted into a pattern, which Christchurch District Court Judge Tony Couch noticed today.

She gets in trouble and goes into custody, which effectively acts as detoxification from her drug use.

But then she gets released, finds the temptations too great, and the pattern begins again.
She appeared by video-link at court to enter guilty pleas to four charges and spoke well, though she got quite excitable about the prospect of going to her family in Auckland.
That seemed a real possibility for a few minutes, until she admitted that her family was keen for her to visit but not to stay with them.

Judge Couch urged defence counsel Alex Greaves to make contact with the family to see what help they might offer.

In the meantime, the woman is staying in custody until next Wednesday when another judge - who had earlier put her on a rehabilitative sentence of intensive supervision with judicial monitoring - will consider what to do with her.

The issue is that she was arrested in May and has spent six weeks in custody - the equivalent of the three month jail term she could reasonably expect for the court charges she admitted today.

Judge Couch said that holding her in custody much longer would be "unjust". He has remanded the case to next week so she can be resentenced on the earlier charges, since the intensive supervision sentence was a failure.

He suppressed the woman's name when he realised Open Justice was likely to report the case. He made the order because of "the risk of harm to her mental health". He said the charges needed to be seen in the context of her history.

The woman admitted charges of disorderly behaviour, assaulting a policeman by spitting on him, wilful damage, and obscenely exposing herself.

On May 11, she went to the nearby Bus Interchange after being released from the police station where she had been held for detox.

She approached a woman sitting at a cafe in the Interchange. She said, "Look here", and exposed her breasts to the woman before grabbing her cellphone from the table she was sitting at, and throwing it against the wall, damaging it. She then left.

Seven hours later, she went back to the police station, going to the reception area where there were two members of the public.

She took off all her clothes and refused to put them back on.

The next day, she went to a service station where she threw a can on to the floor, causing it to open and wet the floor. She then walked around knocking items off the shelves and on to the floor.

When she was arrested and placed in a police car, she spat on the face and arm of the officer arresting her.

In court, she explained that she had been trying to go to a residential rehabilitation centre, but it had been declined because she did not have stable mental health.