Hastings<\/a> and lodge with an older couple.<\/p>\nThings went well at first, until the wife went away for a while. Then the abuse started.<\/p>\n
The Crown case, presented by prosecutor Megan Mitchell, said the man began assaulting the woman, punching her for perceived disrespect or striking her when she chose to keep quiet for fear of provoking him.<\/p>\n
He punched her face, legs and ribs and pulled her to the ground by her hair. The violence was often accompanied by verbal abuse, and he locked her outside the house.<\/p>\n
The man asked the woman to perform oral sex on him. She complied, believing she had no choice.<\/p>\n
From then on, she was forced to provide oral sex more often. When she refused, she was given a \u201cfat hiding\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Some of the assault and sexual connection charges were laid representatively, meaning these things happened on multiple occasions.<\/p>\n
The court was told that in early 2024, the man tried to have sex with the woman, unsuccessfully.<\/p>\n
The man denied the allegations, claiming in his recorded police interview that the woman had made advances to him.<\/p>\n
He said he had woken up from a heavy sleep while on medication to find her performing oral sex on him.<\/p>\n
The jury believed her account.<\/p>\n
Foster father tipped off police<\/p>\n
After leaving the foster family, the woman had kept in touch with them through Facebook Messenger.<\/p>\n
Her former foster father told the court that the contact was frequent during the first six months, but then became less so, and the messages became more concerning.<\/p>\n
The foster dad initially thought the woman was \u201cover-exaggerating some of these stories\u201d, but they became \u201cmore worrisome\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
They detailed abusive behaviour, threats made towards her, even photographs of her bruised face and black eyes.<\/p>\n
The foster father implored the young woman to go to police, but she did not.<\/p>\n
He then contacted police himself.<\/p>\n
Day of arrest recounted<\/p>\n
Detective Constable Bailee Carr told the court about the day officers turned up at the house to conduct a \u201cwelfare check\u201d on the woman.<\/p>\n
The man came to the door first and was \u201cquite resistant\u201d towards police. Officers struggled to gain control of him and put handcuffs on him.<\/p>\n
Then, the woman came out, and she too was \u201cverbally obstructive\u201d towards police and emotionally heightened, Carr said.<\/p>\n
The man was yelling at her: \u201cDon\u2019t tell them anything. Nothing\u2019s happened, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman was also yelling, telling police not to take him, and police moved to hold her back.<\/p>\n
Carr said, however, that the woman was \u201cacting as if she was pushing against\u201d the officers, but they felt she was putting up little resistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t feel she wanted to get to him,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
As soon as the man was out of earshot, the woman\u2019s demeanour changed, and she began to tell the officers about what had been happening to her.<\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She told them that in the days before they came knocking, she had feared for her life. Then…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,17704,5765,1874,3368,5194,293,1345,78,5158,111,43,139,69,1118,34458,17703,64011,1354,4741],"class_list":["post-518447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-and","tag-assault","tag-attempted","tag-found","tag-guilty","tag-hastings","tag-his","tag-home","tag-in","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-rape","tag-sexual","tag-violation","tag-woman","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518447","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=518447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}