Crown prosecutor Janielee Avia told a jury the charges arose from an unusual context and all three were interested in BDSM - involving bondage and discipline, dominance and submission.
She told the court that during the man’s relationship with the two women, who he met on Tinder, they engaged in various consensual BDSM activities.
“This is not a case of BDSM gone wrong. Both women say being strangled until they lost consciousness wasn’t something they consented to,” she said.
The Crown says in November 2018 one woman was having sex with the man when he began applying pressure to her throat until she passed out. She came to on the floor and was in a state of shock. They continued to have sex.
But the Crown said the strangulation during sex was unexpected. The woman didn’t consent to being strangled, let alone until she passed out.
On the second occasion between December 2019 and February 2020 the man is alleged to have strangled another woman from behind while they had sex in the shower. When the woman regained consciousness she was on the shower floor and was also in a state of shock.
The Crown said they hadn’t discussed that prior and it wasn’t carried out in a way that it had been previously. It says the man’s actions were intentional and deliberate.
But the defence said neither incident ever happened. Lawyer Adam Couchman said the women had got to know each other before making allegations to the police at the same time.
He said they had done this because both had fallen out with the man for different reasons, but his client denied either incident had ever occurred.
In a video interview with police played to the jury one of the women described how she had met the man when they matched on Tinder at the end of 2018. In 2019 they met for coffee and discussed forming a dominate, submissive relationship.
They decided to do a BDSM session, but in order to do that she had to “earn” points from him. This involved him setting “tasks” for her such as writing an essay about what “kink” meant to her.
She said at their first session she was quite taken aback at how real the scene was, describing it as more violent and less role-play than she had ever experienced.
“Most times, when you are doing a kink scene it’s quite obviously role play, there is an element of realism, but it’s role play,” she said.
But he told her she was special and said he wanted to do another “scene” with her.
After that session, the man gave her a set of rules on how to behave and said the ownership of her body belonged to him. He also set her more tasks including arranging sex liaisons with men to accrue points. After three months she had his name tattooed on her wrist.
She explained that if she didn’t follow the rules the relationship would end.
She also described how he had allegedly strangled her in the shower, adding that it differed from other “breath play” they had done, where the airflow is restricted.
But the woman said she fell out with the man after the Covid lockdown, when she was able to talk to other submissives the man was seeing. She was also uncomfortable when she met the man’s partner because she seemed unaware he was seeing other women.
She said it wasn’t until she left the relationship that she realised how vulnerable she was.
The trial before Judge Bruce Davidson is expected to continue into next week.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
