She felt used and set up by new friends in Wairoa.
She said Newton was the uncle of one of those friends. He was twice her age, with a full-face tattooed mask, “scary and dangerous”. He told her he had just returned to Wairoa from the South Island to reassert his hold on the town's meth trade.
His behaviour towards her was confusing, the woman said. She could not understand if he had enlisted the help of family and friends to invent a story as a way of forcing her into a sexual relationship with him, or whether he truly believed she was selling drugs for a rival gang.
She had been hiding at home that week after the incidents, too frightened even to go to work.
Newton first saw her with his niece and began texting her.
On November 7, she agreed to meet with him after his sister turned up at her work warning her of accusations that she was selling drugs for the Barbarians gang.
Newton initially told her it was his niece and some of her female friends who were responsible for the accusations and that he would help her sort it out. She thought she could trust him as he was older, the woman said.
He took her to his niece's house that evening but his niece did not arrive home until much later and was too drunk to discuss anything.
The woman said she then agreed to go to Newton's house because it was too late to go to her own and she felt under duress to go with him. She was worried he might give her the bash.
She told him she only wanted to go to sleep, and despite assuring her he would let her, he persisted all night with sexual advances until she finally gave in. He let her go afterward, as she had hoped he might.
But she realised she left some personal belongings behind and later that day went to get them. She hoped he might be out but he arrived in a car and insisted she get in.
He drove her to his niece's house (a short distance away), where she said he kept her in the car for about two hours, angrily accusing her of “selling crack for the Barbarians”, and saying he had wasted a lot of his time trying to sort it out and that he was anxious to get back to the South Island.
His niece and about seven other adults were at the house. Children were also present. Someone used another vehicle to block the driveway, the woman said.
She felt unsafe, too frightened to get out of the car and when she tried, Newton said, “you're just f***ing with me now, and I'm gonna teach you what happens.”
He told her he was not a nice person — she could find that out by googling him. He said he had killed people.
While in the car, he smoked some meth. She hoped it would calm him down.
He sent his niece to his house to get things for his trip to the South Island. She brought back an ornamental-looking dagger on a chain, which he hung around his neck.
Newton told her to get out and on to her knees then “tortured” her with the knife — not stabbing her but poking her in “the guts” with it about 10 times, the woman said.
The women at the house kept taunting her to tell them where the (drug) “shops” were. But she had already told them anything she knew, the woman said.
She felt ganged up on, like they were putting words in her mouth.
She asked his niece why she was doing this and was told “family comes first”.
Newton then gave the women the “green light” to beat her up any time they saw her, the complainant said.
She did not know why she was eventually allowed to leave but as she did Newton followed her and punched her hard in the jaw. (The charge he admitted at the outset of the trial was for that assault.)
She ran off and was pursued by the group in their cars but she managed to make it home.
