Warning: this story contains allegations of family harm that may be upsetting to some readers.<\/p>\n
A man facing a raft of family harm and violence charges has lashed out at the Crown, describing the prosecutor as a “freak” and “twisted”.<\/p>\n
At that point, Judge Peter Hobbs intervened, telling the man, whose name is suppressed, that he would not tolerate the man insulting a Crown prosecutor.<\/p>\n
“I do not like the Crown and what they have done to me,” the man responded.<\/p>\n
The man is on trial in the Wellington 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 “lies”, “bulls***”, “utter crap” and “completely incorrect”.<\/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, 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 “house of horrors”.<\/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, “the house was rat-infested, the dog s*** everywhere” and it was filled with teenagers who “would urinate on the leather couches because they were so high”.<\/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, “I want my life back, and I don\u2019t want to see him anymore. I want him to move on like he promised.”<\/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
“I 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?” the woman\u2019s message said.<\/p>\n
“This is all about a whipped-up woman who wants me in her life, basically providing everything she wants for free out of me,” he told the jury.<\/p>\n
“It\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, “she just wants a man, and she wants a partner”.<\/p>\n
But the man reiterated that he wasn\u2019t interested, “I\u2019m just a man with a broken neck and fighting the system, that\u2019s it.”<\/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
“I\u2019ve been harassed by the police and the Crown.<\/p>\n
“This 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,” 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
“No, not at all,” 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
“How about I punch you in the f***** face?” 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
“They\u2019ve stolen my dog Wilber, and I am not happy.<\/p>\n
“You\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,” 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
\u00a0– Catherine Hutton, Open Justice reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: this story contains allegations of family harm that may be upsetting to some readers. A man facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-446405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446405","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=446405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}