The Taranaki man punched his pregnant partner’s stomach and threatened to kill her and their children.
WARNING: This story details family violence and may be distressing for some readers.
A man considered “a danger to his family” punched his heavily pregnant partner in the stomach and threatened to kill her and their other children, who witnessed the violence.
“Daddy was hurting Mummy, and was fighting her,” the children told police, who arrived while the man was still “yelling and screaming” at his partner.
The man, who can not be named, had been arguing with the woman when she asked him to leave their Taranaki home.
His response was to break a broom and their children’s toys, before punching the woman in the neck area, and her stomach.
“What’s disturbing was she was 30 weeks pregnant at the time,” Judge Turitea Bolstad told the man at his sentencing in New Plymouth District Court last week.
“You then proceeded to threaten to kill her and the two children.”
A protection order was already in place, for the benefit of the woman and the children, at the time of the October 26 incident last year.
Police charged the man with assault on a person in a family relationship, threatening to kill and breaching a protection order.
He admitted the charges.
Judge Bolstad told the man, who has a history of family violence, she was shocked by the police summary of facts.
“I actually made a note for myself and put ‘you’re a danger to your family’.”
She said the man was meant to protect his family, but he clearly had no regard for their wellbeing.
“All you seem to be doing is hurting the ones you love the most.
“Then I looked at the presentence report to try and find something to grasp onto in terms of you taking full responsibility for your actions, but I couldn’t find anything ... it looked like you tried to put the blame back on her.”
Judge Bolstad said she was pleased to hear the woman had moved on from the man.
“Her and her babies are now safe. And luckily enough for you, all she wants from you is to get help.”
The judge then put the spotlight on the man.
“What do you think? What have you got to say for yourself?”
But he stood non-reactive in the dock.
The two stared at each other as the courtroom sat in silence for more than a minute, until the man finally spoke.
He acknowledged “things could of went other ways”, and he did not “want” help but he knew he “needed” help.
The judge was pleased he had spoken, given that the information she had received on the case lacked his accountability.
Defence lawyer Josie Mooney accepted there were concerning features in the offending, given her client was in a relationship with the victim, their children were present, and the woman was pregnant.
“She has since given birth, and he has not had a chance to meet his new son,” Mooney told the court.
“So that has been a significant cost for him as a consequence of his actions and offending.”
Referencing the victim impact statement, Mooney said the woman wanted her distance from the man and did not want him to remain in New Plymouth, but she had contacted him about potentially meeting the baby.
Mooney submitted that he was remorseful for his actions and knew he needed to change.
She suggested that the appropriate sentence was one of home detention, to be served in Auckland, where he has been on electronically-monitored (EM) bail.
In its prosecution, the police identified the victim’s vulnerability, a breach of trust, that there were children present, the harm caused, that the woman was pregnant at the time, and the man’s previous family violence convictions as aggravating factors in the case.
Police took no issue with a sentence of home detention, given the man’s compliance with his EM bail.
Judge Bolstad said she had accepted, after hearing from the man directly, that he had thought about his actions and understood the consequences.
She also accepted that he wanted to better himself and had acknowledged he “has some work to do”.
The judge took a starting point of 24 months’ imprisonment before applying credit for the man’s guilty pleas and his willingness to address his offending behaviours.
From the end sentence of 15 months’ imprisonment, she then gave an uplift of one month for his previous convictions.
Those 16 months were then converted to 7.5 months of home detention, after the judge took into account the man’s time spent in custody and on bail.
“It’s an opportunity for you to address your issues - those things that we talked about - and what you want to do, yeah?” she said to him.
“Yip,” he responded.
Tara Shaskey is an assistant editor and reporter for the Open Justice team. She joined NZME in 2022 and has worked as a journalist since 2014.