Abuse trial jury in Napier told: 'Someone in this case is lying'

A teenage girl who alleges months of physical and sexual abuse from her father was a "credible and compelling" witness, a court has been told.

But the father's lawyer says that the girl's allegations took on "a life of their own", and the abuse did not happen.

Crown counsel Cameron Stuart and defence counsel Leo Lafferty made their closing addresses on Thursday in a jury trial in the Napier District Court.

Lafferty said that the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a working man who provided for his daughter, and who acknowledged he was not a perfect father, "but that doesn't make him a monster".

The daughter thrived in his care in a "loving and supporting home", he said.

He said the father emphatically denied that, apart from an assault on Father's Day 2020, he did any of the alleged acts.

"He simply says, this is not true," Lafferty said.

Lafferty submitted that the girl's account of the Father's Day incident snowballed once she told her mother about it while visiting her on holiday.

"The allegations then take a life of their own about all of this abuse. She acknowledges that no one has ever seen it," Lafferty said.

Allegations of sexual abuse were then made to "cement resistance ever to go back to her father".

Stuart said the girl had given one version of events and her father effectively the opposite. She said physical and sexual abuse had occurred, and he said that it did not.

"Someone in this case is lying, and there is no hiding from that fact," Stuart told the jury.

Stuart said the Crown made no apology for relying on the girl's evidence in the case. She was a credible and compelling witness.

He told the jury: "Your fundamental task is to answer the question: do you believe her?"

Referring to the girl's evidence, he said that only someone who was telling the truth could sustain the amount of detail she provided under the scrutiny of cross-examination.

Her story never shifted and her narrative never changed.

"Her consistency is a hallmark of someone who is telling the truth," Stuart said.

The father has admitted two charges of assault on a person in a family relationship, relating to the Father's Day incident.

However, he has pleaded not guilty to 28 other charges including raping a female aged 12 to 16, attempted rape, unlawful sexual connection, indecent assault, assaulting a person with a blunt instrument, assault on a female and attempted unlawful sexual connection.

Judge Russell Collins was due to sum up in the case on Friday before the jury of six men and six women consider their verdict.