Victim has coping skills of todder, court hears

A mentally impaired man at the centre of kidnapping and brutality charges has a toddler's ability to care for himself, a jury in the High Court at Rotorua heard.

Leneith Moeke, 36, and Gene Karauria, 29, have pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges including mistreating a vulnerable adult. They've pleaded not guilty.

Clinical psychologist Tanya Breen, described the man, whose name is suppressed, as having an IQ of 58, placing him towards the bottom of mild intellectual disability and close to a moderate one.

She rated his coping skills as those of a 3-year-old.

Ms Breen said when she talked to the man's aunt she told of how he found things like washing his face a big chore. At times he'd soil himself and need to be told to change his pants and clean himself up.

To Karauria's lawyer, Roger Gowing, she said the aunt confirmed he had been bullied by his whanau.

A teenage girl, who moved into Moeke and Karauria's house after the man, told a specialist interviewer in a video played to the court that she had seen, and often heard, both defendants hitting him, of seeing him with his legs tied up in the shed he'd been sent to sleep in and chained to a clothesline.

She told of cleaning blood from floors and walls when the man got a hiding, describing how once Karuira had hit him so hard he fell into a wall, ripping it open.

She said both defendants hit the man "and stuff".

See earlier story here

- NZN