The defence has called the case a “MeToo fest” and said while the defendant admits to doing drugs and having sex with other women, that was the nature of the industry, and he was popular and did not need to ply women with drugs and alcohol for sex.
Some details of the case and names of those involved cannot be reported because the defendant has interim name suppression until at least the end of the trial.
On Tuesday, the woman described being scared when the man climbed into her bed on a work trip and how their affair later developed. She told the jury the man gave her meth “quite often, nearly every weekend”.
In the trial today, under questioning from defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC, she said she was sure the man fell in love with her.
“Physically I was his puppet. Mentally we connected on a higher level,” the woman said.
“I was his. I was property. I wasn’t a human.”
The woman said the affair was “crazy”, “fun”, “wild” and “really naughty”.
”It was like the drugs he provided.
”He’s like the drug as well. In all honesty, yeah, I wanted to be his girlfriend.”
The woman said the man displayed narcissistic traits.
“Power, control, he gets off on it,” she said.
“When I would speak of God, he would make jokes and say, ‘I am God’.”
Mansfield asked the woman if she and the man had a “very passionate relationship” where they loved each other.
The woman agreed.
Later, when referring to an incident over which he had been charged with raping her, the woman said that while sex with the man had been non-consensual, she did not use the word “rape”.
“I didn’t tell anybody I was raped. I didn’t make a statement to say I was raped.”
The woman said she was “used to the toxicity” of the relationship.
“He makes himself your whole world. Everybody around him was a puppet. Everybody has a role to play in where he wants to go and he has means and ways to make people do things.”
The woman said the relationship was “toxic” for herself, the man, their friends and their families.
“He 100 per cent pulled me away from my husband. [The man] loved that I was a mum. He loves children. But he came before my children, absolutely. That’s the essence of him,” the woman told the jury.
“It was an affair. It wasn’t a real relationship.”
The woman said the man had built a fantasy world.
“[In it] he was a ... man with a wife and a girlfriend and at the same time he was screwing other girls.”
Mansfield asked if she had loved the man.
“No. I look back at it and I was in love with the lifestyle. I was in love with this world he had created,” she said.
The woman said she realised she did not love the man through years of healing and counselling.
Mansfield questioned the woman on a series of calendar entries, emails and messages she had allowed police and counsel to access through her mobile phone on Tuesday.
Mansfield read to the court an email the woman sent the defendant after he allegedly assaulted her, in which she wrote she had broken up her marriage to pursue a relationship with the man.
“I didn’t want to bring up bad times between us. This was a love letter,” she said.
“I didn’t say I was sexually attracted to him. I’m attracted to a lot of people.”
The woman said she was attracted to the man’s character and charisma.
“No, it means I loved the life we were living. Our relationship wasn’t real. I tried to make it real.”
Mansfield asked the woman: “Is that how you felt when you were writing this?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
Counsel had originally requested the woman’s messages and emails in March.
When Mansfield asked the woman why she had not provided her phone to police and counsel until yesterday, she said she did not “open the letter”.
The trial, before Justice Layne Harvey and a jury of nine women and three men, is in its fifth week and is set down for at least six weeks.
Maryana Garcia is a regional reporter for the Rotorua Daily Post and the Bay of Plenty Times.
