KEY POINTS:
Lisa Kuka says she really spoilt Nia Glassie, her sixth and last child, after the little girl was born in 2004.
"She was my life," Kuka - on trial for Nia's manslaughter - told a detective in a video-taped interview played at the High Court in Rotorua today.
Nia died at Auckland's Starship Hospital on August 3 last year, 12 days after being taken to Rotorua Hospital in a coma. Doctors have told the court they may have been able to save her had she received medical treatment sooner.
Kuka said she hadn't wanted any more children. Her oldest son lived with his father, a daughter was adopted by Kuka's sister at age 2, and she already had three children with Glassie Glassie (CRCT), her then partner. When she fell pregnant, Kuka said Glassie wanted a boy.
She was reluctant to tell him a scan showed it was another daughter because he felt a girl should go to another of Kuka's sisters.
"I wasn't having an abortion," the 34-year-old said.
And when Nia was born "I wasn't going to give my baby away".
When Nia was a few months old her parents' 11-year relationship broke up and Glassie moved to Australia.
He had been a good dad, said Kuka, but he had had a "seven-day relationship" with Kuka's niece and she had discovered them together one afternoon, in the shed.
"It hurt, it still does," she said.
The interview continued to canvass Kuka's numerous moods with the children and short-term relationships, including one with an older brother of Wiremu Curtis, who was to become her partner at age 17, when she was 32.
He and his brother Michael Curtis are charged with Nia's murder. Nia's cousin Michael Pearson and Oriwa Kemp, Michael Curtis' partner and mother of his small daughter, also face manslaughter counts.
When she began living with Wiremu Curtis, at her brother's home in Tauranga , and later her father's home in Rotorua, before sharing a house with Michael Curtis and Oriwa Kemp, Wiremu "just adored Nia", said Kuka.
Five taped interviews, each about an hour long, are being played to the jury today.
The trial continues before Justice Judith Potter and a jury of 11 and is expected to take another week.
- NZPA
