Tautoko Mai<\/a>, everything like that, and then for months there was nothing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\u201cI felt like I was in the dark. And then I was scared … because he was out on bail at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she was \u201cso scared he was going to come back\u201d.<\/p>\n
She would think she had seen his car and ring the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were like, you haven\u2019t, just calm down. He can\u2019t come up your street. There\u2019s a protection order, that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
But often the responses were slow, which she appreciates was likely because the police were so busy with these sorts of incidents, and she was \u201cjust another one\u201d.<\/p>\n
It had felt \u201cisolating\u201d, but she was grateful she had supportive friends, family and colleagues.<\/p>\n
When it came to the jury trial, she was relieved the man was found guilty on the strangulation charge.<\/p>\n
While she was disappointed he hadn\u2019t been found guilty on the serious sexual violence charges, she was pragmatic about the verdict.<\/p>\n
Her biggest fear was that he would be acquitted on everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re having to relive it in court. You\u2019re faced with the person who did this to you, and their lawyer telling you, \u2018oh, you\u2019re just making it up\u2019, which is what his lawyer said to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve had to tell it, and then you have all these people who don\u2019t believe you. That was my biggest fear … what if it\u2019s all for nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n
But he was found guilty of strangulation and an assault with intent to injure charge.<\/p>\n
\u2018Remind a woman of her strength\u2019<\/p>\n
She said when trying to help those in abusive relationships, it was important to focus on the victim, not on the person causing the harm.<\/p>\n
The victim would \u201calready know\u201d what the person was like, but will have made excuses and justifications for the behaviour.<\/p>\n
A better approach was to build up the victim and remind them of their worth.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemind a woman of her strength, and what she likes doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the things that could bring someone joy … letting them know that people want to spend time with them away from their sh***y partners, doing fun hobbies and going to the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of her victim impact statement read in court, the woman told the man, and the judge, things were looking up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in such a good place these days. I\u2019m happy, healthy, and will continue to grow, as I hope [the defendant] does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crown: Good character discount \u2018utterly off the table\u2019<\/p>\n
The manwas assessed in a pre-sentence report as having a low risk of reoffending, but a high risk of offering harm to intimate partners.<\/p>\n
The aggravating features Judge David Cameron noted were the breach of trust, and that the woman was sleeping at the time he entered the house.<\/p>\n
She was in her home, where she was entitled to feel safe, and had only reluctantly agreed he could come over, under \u201crelatively constant pressure\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo strengthen his position, [the defendant] had been refusing to fix the shower, which he himself had damaged by punching a hole in the wall, unless she allowed him to enter. <\/p>\n
Also, he had either taken or damaged some of her jewellery and was refusing to replace it, unless she agreed to his request,\u201d Judge Cameron said.<\/p>\n
The judge noted the length of the strangulation, the fact it was preceded by an attempt to have sex, and that the woman lost consciousness.<\/p>\n
He adopted a starting point of three years\u2019 and three months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
This was uplifted by three months for the assault with intent to injure charge.<\/p>\n
While the man\u2019s lawyer Bill Nabney sought a discount for good character, which related to letters of support, the judge declined to give this discount.<\/p>\n
He did not believe the man to be of good character, and referred to the man\u2019s previous convictions.<\/p>\n
The Crown had submitted any good character discount was \u201cutterly off the table\u201d, as the man had 29 previous convictions.<\/p>\n
This included three for family violence, which he had received while awaiting trial for current offending.<\/p>\n
It was not appropriate to have a discount for remorse, either in the Crown\u2019s view, though Nabney said that in situations where there were mixed verdicts, it was difficult.<\/p>\n
He said his client did take responsibility for the offending for which he had been convicted, but maintained his innocence on the more serious charges for which he had been acquitted.<\/p>\n
The judge declined to apply a discount for remorse and rehabilitative efforts.<\/p>\n
However, the man was given a 5% discount for $1000 emotional harm reparation, which his mother agreed to pay immediately on his behalf.<\/p>\n
He received an end sentence of three years and four months imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At some point, she realised she was \u201csick of being sad\u201d. She had been caught up in \u201churricane\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,17704,868,158646,14736,59502,2082,54106,5158,111,43,139,69,1118,427,94459,1227,1961,96,13118,1455,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-284625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-assault","10":"tag-deals","11":"tag-descriptions","12":"tag-domestic","13":"tag-expartner","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-imprisoned","16":"tag-man","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-of","22":"tag-story","23":"tag-strangulation","24":"tag-tauranga","25":"tag-this","26":"tag-upsetting","27":"tag-violence","28":"tag-warning","29":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}