A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
On the second day of a jury trial in Gisborne District Court of a man charged with sexually assaulting his four stepdaughters over a period of years, one of the complainants testified via a digital recording that the defendant had bought the girls underwear and short and tight-fitting shirts.
The young woman has since died.
“I felt like I should be shopping with my mum for that type of stuff,” she said in the recording.
She was the second oldest daughter in the family and was interviewed by police in October 2020. The court was told the girl had died in 2021, but that her passing away was not relevant to the trial.
The girl said in the DVD interview that boys would sometimes walk her home from school, and her stepfather would call her “a whore or a slut”.
She testified that the first time he allegedly assaulted her she was 12 and the only person at home. She said she had fallen asleep in the sitting room and woke to find him lying next to her with his hands touching her private parts and trying to force his fingers inside her. She said “it felt yuck” and that it hurt.
She told the court she suffered abuse at his hands over about three years, and that every time he did something he would tell her not to tell her mother. She said the abuse became rougher over the years and it hurt her more and more. She said the abuse occurred sometimes more than once a week. Sometimes it would stop for about two months, and that she did not know when it was going to happen next. She alleged that after she turned 15 it happened twice more, “and then I had had enough. I knew this was wrong.”
That was March 2018, one month after her 15th birthday.
The defendant is alleged to have abused the three other sisters once each, including a rape, but the second eldest is alleged to have suffered abuse over the longest period of time.
The oldest girl was cross-examined by counsel Nicola Wright during yesterday’s proceedings, and part of her questioning related to holes in the wall at the two rental properties the family lived in during the period the abuse is alleged to have happened.
“Wasn’t (the defendant) more of a ‘yeller’ than someone who punched things?” Mrs Wright asked.
“He done both,” the complainant said.
“You were trying to make (the defendant) look bad, weren’t you?”
“No.”
“How many times would you say he smashed a door?”
“A few times.”
“I’m telling you that’s not correct and he only smashed a door once. Do you accept that?”
“No.”
The oldest sister said she did not remember receiving clothes from her stepfather. She remembered getting them from other family members but not from him.
The court heard that the defendant had been in prison from June 3, 2014 to April 29, 2015 for a theft. Mrs Wright said he had been in prison at the time she had said “these things happened to you”.
Mrs Wright put it to the complainant that she had lied in her police interview, lied in court the day before, and was again lying.
The complainant denied that.
“You lied to get (the defendant) out of your mum’s house.”
“No.”
The defendant’s sister also testified in court yesterday. The court heard she went to the police over allegations the two older sisters made on Facebook.
“(The older girl’s) post pretty much stated that (the defendant) was a paedophile, that he had touched her up and down,” she told the court.
She was asked to read a post the second oldest girl had made, and it recounted the allegations and her frustration and anger at not being believed.
One line ran “Get f***** and thanks for ruining my life”.
The third youngest sister was 15 when she was interviewed by police in November 17, 2020, and the video recording of that interview was played before the court.
She alleged that one night when she was still in primary school the defendant came into her bedroom, touched her indecently and pulled out his penis. She said he tried to pull her pants down at which point she fled the room and ran into her older sister’s room.
“He told me not to tell anybody,” she said. “I didn’t because I thought he was going to hurt me or my mum.”
Later yesterday the girl, who is now 17, appeared in court via CCTV. She testified that she was familiar with his voice, she knew it was him, and that she had fled to her sister’s bedroom where the two of them jammed a knife into the door frame to stop it from being opened.
She will be cross-examined today.
The defendant was remanded in custody.
Judge Turitea Bolstad is presiding.