TOP STORY: Dad made girls fight each other

A Hastings father gave his daughters boxing gloves and told them to fight - with the loser to get "a hiding", a court was told.
The sisters, aged 11 and 13, donned the red gloves and began punching each other in the lounge till the oldest started crying.
She was then allegedly smacked with a studded belt and the sisters, punched, slapped and then beaten with a golf club. Their father, who has name suppression, appeared in Hastings District Court yesterday for a depositions hearing.
He faced six charges including the wilful ill-treatment of his daughters, assault using a golf club and a piece of firewood as weapons, and injuring.
He sat silently in the dock and listened through a Samoan translator as his daughters' evidential interviews were played.
In the video the 13-year-old told a Child Youth and Family social worker how on June 7 she began fighting with her sister over who could hold their baby sister.
Their father arrived home and set to discipline the sisters. "We had to put boxing gloves on our hands and start fighting. Who loses or cries gets a whip with the belt," she said quietly.
"I got tired and then he got the belt and whacked me, punched me and slapped me and pulled my hair. That's why I had a split lip."
But when she was asked by defence lawyer, Richard Stone, if what she said in the interview was true she replied, "no". Her sister, 11, was more vocal when detailing the boxing bout.
"He [father] told my little brother to go and get the boxing gloves, so he did."
"He said, come and fight, who will win?" "We were punching our faces, I was punching my sister's face and she was punching mine."
"She was getting all tired punching me and my dad got the belt and smacked her with it."
But she said she also got "a hiding" with a golf club and was whacked on her arms and bottom, before they were given a Bible.
"I weren't even reading the Bible, because my bum was too sore to sit on the floor," she said.
The next day she stayed home from school to hide her bruising and her father poured boiling water over a towel and wrapped it around her sore arm.
"He said it was helping my hand to get better," she said. She also told of a time she had been smacked with a piece of firewood for dropping the baby.
When cross-examined the 11-year-old, wearing a fluffy pink jersey, said she had not told the truth in the videoed interview.
Police prosecutor Andy Horne said victims sometimes recanted their statements due to loyalty, love, intimidation or fear. But it was the role of the jury to determine the credibility of witnesses.
Mr Stone called for the case to be dismissed. Justices of the Peace Dorothea Millen and John Cameron dismissed the charges relating to the older sister.
But the man was committed to trial on the four child-abuse charges against the younger sister.
He was remanded on bail to October 29. While a screen stopped the sisters from seeing their dad in court, outside they hugged him as they waited to go home.