“Just get me off two of these charges,” he said to her from the Otago Corrections Facility.
Britten told her he would buy her a new car if she got him off the charges.
“I’ll bribe ya,” he said.
Earlier this week the woman sat in the Christchurch District Court and looked on as Judge Michael Crosbie read out her concerns and addressed Britten at sentencing.
Judge Crosbie said the woman had moved on, but feared Britten’s actions had traumatised her daughter.
She said she was resilient and did not have fears for her own safety any more, the judge said.
“One message I want you to take away; you have learned this behaviour over a long period of time,” Judge Crosbie told Britten.
“It will take a really long time to unlearn that behaviour.”
The summary showed the pair had been in a relationship for several years. The court heard there had been 40 reported family harm incidents during their time together.
The couple eventually parted ways with a final protection order issued against Britten a year later . He also had a spate of offending in 2025.
A series of incidents
Britten, 29, had been forbidden from driving and was the driver of a van when he pushed the woman out of the passenger door at a Christchurch car park.
She fell out of the vehicle, hitting the ground, before getting up and walking away, only to find Britten reversing back quickly, and colliding with a parked vehicle.
He turned sharply and drove directly towards her as she put her hand up to defend herself.
She was knocked over as he drove over her foot and she suffered bruising to her knee and abrasions and bruising to her foot.
Two days later, he turned up at her house at night and started banging on the front door, demanding that he be let in.
Her mother and daughter were at home as he prised a closed window open and started climbing inside the house.
The Christchurch District Court. Photo / Alyse Wright
As the woman started taking photographs of him on her phone, he fled in a vehicle, doing a burnout and colliding with her car, but causing no significant damage.
The following day he rang her twice and she told him not to call again.
Britten was arrested a couple of days later on separate matters and called her again following his release from custody that day.
He told her that a judge had “laughed her out of court” in connection to the charges he faced in relation to her.
He said he had been outside her house just a day earlier and seen police were there.
The call caused her to become upset and scared, according to the summary.
Dangerous driving
The court heard of another incident in which Britten had tail-gated another motorist in Lyttelton and twice rammed into the back of their car in 2024.
Again, he was forbidden from driving at the time, when he was travelling one metre behind the victim, whose wife was sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle.
The driver stopped at a roundabout to give way when he was hit from behind by Britten’s vehicle.
Britten drove up behind him and rammed the car a second time. Britten then fled the scene in his vehicle.
Judge Crosbie said the victim was now a nervous motorist, preferring to take a different and longer route to Lyttelton.
‘At risk of reoffending’
The summary of facts showed a list of multiple forbidden driving offences between 2024 and 2025.
Judge Crosbie said Britten had 23 previous convictions, 17 of those for driving offences.
Probation said Britten was at high risk of reoffending, the judge said.
There was a pattern of driving offences stretching back to 2012, the judge said.
Judge Crosbie said Britten had grown up with violence, drug use and instability.
The judge said Britten had started engagement with a prison-based programme, while letters of support showed he had no trouble with working.
However, the family violence involved breaches of court orders and a “deliberate effort to undermine the judicial process”, the judge said.
Judge Crosbie sentenced Britten to three years and six months’ jail on charges of perverting the course of justice, injuring with intent, contravening a protection order, dangerous driving, failing to stop and ascertain injury and driving while unlicensed.
Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently he was editor of the Hauraki-Coromandel Post, based in Whangamatā. He was previously deputy editor of the Cook Islands News.