{"id":445796,"date":"2026-05-26T09:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T09:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/445796\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T09:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T09:42:10","slug":"judge-warns-defendant-after-outburst-in-wellington-family-violence-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/445796\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge warns defendant after outburst in Wellington family violence trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man is on trial in the Wellington<\/a> District Court, where he denies 16 charges, including male assaults female, suffocation, assault with a weapon, ill-treatment of an animal, supplying a Class C controlled drug to a young person, and common assault.<\/p>\n

Because he is self-represented and giving evidence in his own defence, the judge read out the allegations to him. <\/p>\n

As he did so, the man dismissed each allegation, describing them with a range of terms, including \u201clies\u201d, \u201cbulls***\u201d, \u201cutter crap\u201d and \u201ccompletely incorrect\u201d.<\/p>\n

During his testimony, the man frequently went off on tangents that, at times, were difficult to follow. <\/p>\n

As a result, he received several warnings from the judge to only give evidence that was relevant to the current charges. <\/p>\n

\u2018A whipped-up woman who wants me in her life\u2019<\/p>\n

The charges relate to a woman, whose name is also suppressed, whom he met on Tinder. He later moved in with her and her teenage son. <\/p>\n

It is during this time that the Crown says the relationship soured, with the mother and son describing how the man was allegedly violent and controlling towards them. <\/p>\n

The teenager told the court he was repeatedly hit in the face<\/a>, had spray cans hurled at him and was whacked in the head with a back scratcher so hard that he cried.<\/p>\n

It is also alleged the man beat the family dog with an electrical cord and dangled it by its legs.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the trial, the woman described the man as violent and controlling and said the situation resembled a \u201chouse of horrors<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n

But in his evidence, the man alleged she was the controlling one. <\/p>\n

He told the court that when he moved in, \u201cthe house was rat-infested, the dog s*** everywhere\u201d and it was filled with teenagers who \u201cwould urinate on the leather couches because they were so high\u201d. <\/p>\n

In her evidence, the woman said the relationship was initially romantic but began to strain after about eight months, when they were living together.<\/p>\n

After his arrest, the woman told police, \u201cI want my life back, and I don\u2019t want to see him anymore. I want him to move on like he promised.\u201d <\/p>\n

Today, the man told the court it was that unwillingness to commit to a romantic relationship that led to these charges, showing the jury a message the woman had texted him. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want my happy life where I can have someone in my life who loves me as a significant other, you don\u2019t want me, so why should I stay?\u201d the woman\u2019s message said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all about a whipped-up woman who wants me in her life, basically providing everything she wants for free out of me,\u201d he told the jury. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen. She\u2019s already got everything, so there\u2018s nothing more to take.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a theme he repeated, telling the jury, \u201cshe just wants a man, and she wants a partner\u201d. <\/p>\n

But the man reiterated that he wasn\u2019t interested, \u201cI\u2019m just a man with a broken neck and fighting the system, that\u2019s it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve been harassed by the Crown and the police\u2019<\/p>\n

In his opening address to the jury, the man said he was abused in state care, including being locked in cells from the age of 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been harassed by the police and the Crown. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis woman done this to me, said I suffocated her. That\u2019s a lie, that\u2019s a 100% lie. She had left prior to the incident, left and abandoned her child. She had rehearsed this stuff with the police,\u201d he told the jury. <\/p>\n

As a result of these charges, he told the jury, he\u2019d spent two years in custody and lost his freedom. <\/p>\n

\u2018How about I punch you in the f***** face?\u2019 <\/p>\n

During cross-examination by prosecutor Wilber Tupua, the man denied that he was angry while he lived at the house, and when he got angry, he got violent. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not at all,\u201d the man responded, claiming the woman had stabbed him with a pair of scissors. <\/p>\n

He also denied punching the woman in the face. <\/p>\n

The court earlier heard evidence from two witnesses who saw her on a night she was alleged to have been assaulted and described her as looking scared, slightly wet and with a bloody nose. A third witness took her to the hospital. <\/p>\n

But the man insisted he didn\u2019t punch her, adding that if he had, her face would be smashed. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow about I punch you in the f***** face?\u201d he suggested to Tupua at one point. <\/p>\n

He also told the jury his injuries, which included a broken back and neck, from past accidents, made it impossible to inflict the injuries he\u2019s accused of. <\/p>\n

He was also adamant he\u2019d never abused the dog, claiming he had hand-reared it since it was a puppy and it was his dog. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve stolen my dog Wilber, and I am not happy. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re trying to rark me up, aren\u2019t you? You think people can get away with stealing my dog? Using the state to furnish their needs because I have a history,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Again, as Tupua listed the allegations, the man denied them all. <\/p>\n

The trial before Judge Hobbs is expected to continue until the end of the week. <\/p>\n

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man is on trial in the Wellington District Court, where he denies 16 charges, including male assaults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,15036,2109,42,78,3958,43,32501,40,38,41,39,54,13118,8218,52],"class_list":["post-445796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-defendant","tag-family","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-judge","tag-news","tag-outburst","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trial","tag-violence","tag-warns","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445796","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=445796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}