Christopher Hunia has been on trial this week in the Tauranga District Court, charged with indecent assault.
A security officer who was called to a woman’s home to refit an electronic monitoring bracelet she tried to cut off was later accused of indecently assaulting her.
The woman claimed the ankle bracket was so painful that she tried to remove it herself, resulting in a visit from First Security officer Christopher Hunia.
The woman, who lived alone, said Hunia massaged her foot, traced his finger along her tattoos, hugged her, and touched scars on her arm.
Her allegations resulted in Hunia being charged and this week he stood trial in the Tauranga District Court.
The woman testified she felt “uncomfortable” and was scared to tell him to stop, as he was in a position of power as a security officer and she didn’t want to make him angry.
The Crown said Hunia made “sexualised comments” to her – telling her it was nice to be dealing with a “pretty woman” and, as he was leaving, that he wished he could “do naughty things” to her.
Hunia has spent the last two days defending the seven charges of indecent assault.
On Friday afternoon, after just over two hours of deliberation, jurors acquitted him of all the charges.
After Hunia was released from the dock, he sat in the public gallery and sobbed into his hands.
The 32-year-old woman was serving a community detention sentence in July 2022, which required her to be at home overnight. During the day she worked in the Bay of Plenty in a job that required her to wear gumboots.
After her electronic monitoring bracelet had become “painful” under her gumboot, arrangements were made for a security officer to come and refit it.
Hunia arrived at her home late that evening, and she told the court he was “unprofessional” and she felt “uncomfortable”, as he was wearing his T-shirt inside out and smelled of body odour.
The 57-year-old took measurements and photos and went to leave, and she claimed he said, “it was nice to be doing this with a pretty woman”.
A short time later, he returned to take new photos, after the first ones he submitted were rejected by a technical adviser.
The Crown case was that, from this point, he spent too long at her address, and his physical contact with her was indecent.
He was accused of “abusing his position of power” with a woman he was attracted to.
The woman said that, as he attempted to get photos that were deemed adequate, he massaged her foot with it sandwiched between his hands, using a circular “washing” motion.
She claimed he asked questions about her tattoos, and traced his fingers up them, and she also accused him of hugging her as she walked towards the door, wrapping his arms around her, and pulling her on to his lap.
He accepted touching her foot, but denied massaging it, denied hugging her, and said he only looked at her tattoos because she showed them to him.
She said he touched scars on her arms, asking her if she was okay and offered to give her his number if she needed someone to talk to.
The woman said this made her feel “yucky” as she didn’t like people seeing them, and she said she told him he needed to leave.
She claimed he said, “I wish I could do naughty things to you” as he left.
She said she messaged her boss as soon as he left, giving an account of the allegations.
The pair were having an affair at the time, and he didn’t keep the messages, telling the court he had done a “declutter” of his phone as, at the time, he was trying to work on his marriage.
The marriage ended, and the woman and her boss are now in a relationship.
The defence suggested it was “convenient” that the messages had been deleted, especially given he had apparently suggested she make a police report.
However, he said that at the time, he didn’t really think about it, and again said he’d been trying to work on his marriage.
Defence lawyer Alexandra Dawick urged the jury to consider whether Hunia could have had an honest belief in consent, given that the woman accepted she hadn’t told him to stop.
She said she had indicated discomfort in her body language, which Crown prosecutor Dan Coulson highlighted in his closing.
She had “put on her fluffy cow slipper to deter the defendant”, Coulson said, and had not hugged back, declined his offers of his phone number, and shooed him to the door.
The defence case was that the allegations were made up because the woman was unhappy that a male guard was sent to the address, when she’d been under the impression only female officers would be sent to her home.
An employment investigation was conducted by First Security, and Hunia was interviewed as part of that process.
The focus was the appropriateness of his behaviour in his work context, not whether he’d committed a criminal offence.
One of the staff involved gave evidence that when he asked Hunia if he’d touched the woman’s scars, Hunia’s responded that they had looked like “self-harm scars” and he touched them to “check if they were real”.
He was worried about her, and wanted to make sure she had someone to talk to.
In Hunia’s police interview, he accepted he shouldn’t have offered his number, but denied touching her arms or scars.
The defence submission was that offering his number may have been inappropriate, but it wasn’t “indecent”, and was only because he was concerned about her.
Dawick said that even if the jury concluded that the scars were touched by Hunia, that still wasn’t enough.
“Just because someone touches someone else does not make it indecent,” she said.
Hunia resigned from First Security after the employment investigation.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.