Auckland businessman assault trial: Jury retires to consider competing accounts of strangulation or self-defence in high society case

Did an Auckland businessman strangle and repeatedly assault his partner after a boozy night out downtown with their high society friends?

Or was he simply defending himself after the woman had once again lashed out in a drunken rage and begun biting and scratching the man, forcing him to remove her from his apartment?

Those questions and more are now in the hands of a jury after the Crown and defence closed their cases on Thursday afternoon in the trial of the man in his 40s, who has interim name suppression.

He faced three charges of assault and one of strangulation following the fracas in his apartment in the early hours of March 11, 2022.

The man says he never struck or strangled the woman but instead acted in self-defence to restrain and remove her from his apartment to prevent her continuing to bite and scratch him. It was something she had done after drinking and lashing out on several previous occasions, he said.

The trial in the Auckland District Court was initially set to last only a few days but has now run for three weeks after the man’s defence team, led by Ron Mansfield KC, produced masses of evidence not part of the prosecution case.

They also called several witnesses who described the woman lashing out violently at the defendant on several prior occasions.

“This isn’t something that just happened out of the blue, folks,” Mansfield told the jury in his closing address.

He was critical of the police for charging the man without interviewing the people who were at the gathering on the night in question to verify aspects of the complainant’s account.

Mansfield also suggested her trip to a doctor after the incident was motivated at least in part by a desire to gather evidence for a legal letter-of-demand seeking $100,000 her solicitors sent the man about a week after he was charged.

“Maybe I’m just being too cynical, I don’t know,” he said.

An Auckland businessman accused of assaulting a woman in March 2022 sits in court on the first day of his trial in the Auckland District Court on November 26, 2024. Photo / George Block

The Crown case, as laid out by prosecutor Pip McNabb, is that the man had manipulated and abused the woman during their relationship by invoking his financial power over her.

McNabb said the medical evidence showed she suffered abrasions to her neck consistent with strangulation, swelling and tenderness to her jaw and received months of treatment for concussion. Mansfield said her injuries were minor, non-specific and consistent with a struggle where his client was defending himself from her attacks.

Earlier, the trial heard how the man provided financial support in the form of a salary to allow her to show a regular income to obtain a mortgage to invest in property, despite the fact she only did sporadic work for his business.

McNabb said the man was so drunk while at a friend’s apartment that night in 2022 that the woman was forced to take him home a few minutes walk away at another apartment in downtown Auckland.

Earlier in the evening, he had belittled her work as a model and told her during a dinner to “go and sit with the other housewives,” the prosecutor said.

He was annoyed she had taken him home and he lashed out, striking her on the jaw before straddling her, strangling her then bundling her out of the apartment and throwing her into the hallway, McNabb alleged.

She said he then opened the door, threw her on the ground again before slamming it shut.

During her time in the witness box, the woman acknowledged having previously bitten the man. But she said it was only ever in response to what she said was his abuse.

McNabb said her acknowledging those previous incidents, including one where she was naked when she pursued the man into the street outside his apartment to make him come home, showed she was being upfront and honest about the sad reality of their relationship.

“Despite the shame and embarrassment of some of her actions during the relationship, she accepted what she had done, accepted that she had been violent. But she denied being the aggressor on March 11 because simply she wasn’t the aggressor that night.”

But Mansfield said she was forced to admit those prior incidents because there were other witnesses to her behaviour.

Ron Mansfield KC said his man was the victim that night in March 2022, not the woman. He used an appropriate level of self-defence under the law, Mansfield said. File photo / Michael Craig

The man says he was forced to restrain the woman and remove her from his apartment after she launched into an attack on him while he was in bed, biting and scratching him. He never strangled her, he said.

While locked out of his apartment, the woman asked to be let back in and contacted the friend whose apartment they were at that night, a prominent property developer.

In messages she sent while locked out, she did not mention being assaulted, and apparently did not remember being strangled until later, Mansfield said.

Instead she resorted to threats, the KC said. She had messaged the friend to say “this is going to get very ugly” and “I know my rights but I’d rather do this nicely”, Mansfield said.

He said the fact she wanted to be let back into the apartment showed she was not the victim of a violent assault, but rather embarrassed at being locked outside the apartment, he said.

“It’s humiliating for her, given her conduct, to be locked outside in the hallway like she was a naughty girl.”

Judge Paul Murray summed up the case on Thursday afternoon before the jury of four women and six men retired about 3.30pm, before being sent home at 5pm. They will resume deliberations from 9am on Friday. Two jurors were earlier discharged for personal reasons.

George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.