Warning: This story deals with descriptions of domestic violence and may be upsetting.
“I liked my life before him, and I’m going to like it after him.”
A woman who was strangled by her ex-partner until she blacked out, said at the time of the violence that she thought she was going to die.
But now, with the man in prison and the court process behind her, she is moving on.
At some point, she realised she was “sick of being sad”.
She had been caught up in “hurricane” of a relationship, with a man several years her senior, after meeting him through work and being attracted by his nice smile, great laugh and charm.
She knew he was a bit of a “bad boy”, but it was exciting and fun for the first month, of what turned out to be a 10-month relationship.
She said she wasn’t aware she was being “love bombed” (a term used to describe intense affection and communication that are manipulative).
As his jealousy increased, at first she thought it indicated he was “protective”, but it got to a point where he didn’t even want her working with a male colleague.
Then they began to fight more – he would slam doors and drive off at speed – and things got physical.
He would hit her face as she drove, or try and grab the steering wheel.
At times, they would be in a heated argument and she would try to leave to get her flatmate.
She said he would “pull me back and throw me on the ground. Then he’d be holding me down ...”
Her flatmate had suspicions, but did not know the full picture.
“She saw a black eye a couple of times and I had to make up some weird, strange excuse, then she was a bit suspicious because she was like, ‘you haven’t been this clumsy before’.”
When she finally tried to end it and cut all contact, the man put a hole in the shower wall at her flat.
Then, he refused to make arrangements to fix it unless she agreed to see him, and not having the money to fix it herself, the woman said the situation felt “crushing”.
It was June 2023, and the man had been texting her all day, asking to see her at her home in Tauranga.
Eventually, and reluctantly, she agreed to leave a door unlocked, but when he turned up, it was the early hours of the morning.
He woke her up with accusations that she was sleeping with someone else.
The woman said she had her period, and wasn’t having sex with anyone, but he told her to prove it before continuing to interrogate her.
Then, after trying to convince her to have sex, he pinned her down and covered her mouth before putting his hands around her throat and strangling her for a minute.
She lost consciousness, and afterwards could feel the blood vessels in her eyes pulsing.
Later, there was a further struggle between the pair, and he struck her left eye with his wrist.
He again strangled her, but this time it lasted 20 seconds, and he used less force than the earlier occasion.
She yelled to her flatmate, who woke up and opened the bedroom door to see the man leaving.
He was arrested after the incident, but took the matter to a jury trial.
He was acquitted on more serious sexual violence charges, but the jury found him guilty on charges of strangulation and assault with intent to injure.
At his sentencing in the Tauranga District Court in late January, the woman’s victim impact statement was read by Crown prosecutor Daniel Coulson.
The woman acknowledged that while the man had some good qualities, his bad qualities had been more “prominent”.
When he damaged the shower by punching a hole in the wall, he’d offered to pay to fix it, but hadn’t.
“I ended up having to pay to replace the whole shower unit, as we were unable to replicate the same panels of the shower, and my landlord was utterly disappointed, and it reflected poorly on me as a tenant,” she said.
It was a brief but “diabolical” relationship, but it was the events on one night in June that “hurt the most”.
They caused her “emotional and physical harm, distress, as well as significant financial loss”, and she had been formally diagnosed with PTSD.
“My world was very small for a long time after the incident and I couldn’t function,” she said.
She said she’d felt “utterly destroyed”.
Speaking to NZME, she said the time between reporting the matter to police and the end of the trial had been almost as hard as the incident itself.
“It felt like I went through this huge rush of getting all this information to the police, the counsellors, Tautoko Mai, everything like that, and then for months there was nothing,” she said.
“I felt like I was in the dark. And then I was scared ... because he was out on bail at the time.”
She said she was “so scared he was going to come back”.
She would think she had seen his car and ring the police.
“They were like, you haven’t, just calm down. He can’t come up your street. There’s a protection order, that sort of thing.”
But often the responses were slow, which she appreciates was likely because the police were so busy with these sorts of incidents, and she was “just another one”.
It had felt “isolating”, but she was grateful she had supportive friends, family and colleagues.
When it came to the jury trial, she was relieved the man was found guilty on the strangulation charge.
While she was disappointed he hadn’t been found guilty on the serious sexual violence charges, she was pragmatic about the verdict.
Her biggest fear was that he would be acquitted on everything.
“You’re having to relive it in court. You’re faced with the person who did this to you, and their lawyer telling you, ‘oh, you’re just making it up’, which is what his lawyer said to me,” she said.
“You’ve had to tell it, and then you have all these people who don’t believe you. That was my biggest fear ... what if it’s all for nothing?”
But he was found guilty of strangulation and an assault with intent to injure charge.
She said when trying to help those in abusive relationships, it was important to focus on the victim, not on the person causing the harm.
The victim would “already know” what the person was like, but will have made excuses and justifications for the behaviour.
A better approach was to build up the victim and remind them of their worth.
“Remind a woman of her strength, and what she likes doing,” she said.
“All the things that could bring someone joy ... letting them know that people want to spend time with them away from their sh***y partners, doing fun hobbies and going to the beach.”
At the conclusion of her victim impact statement read in court, the woman told the man, and the judge, things were looking up.
“I’m in such a good place these days. I’m happy, healthy, and will continue to grow, as I hope [the defendant] does.”
The manwas assessed in a pre-sentence report as having a low risk of reoffending, but a high risk of offering harm to intimate partners.
The aggravating features Judge David Cameron noted were the breach of trust, and that the woman was sleeping at the time he entered the house.
She was in her home, where she was entitled to feel safe, and had only reluctantly agreed he could come over, under “relatively constant pressure”.
“To strengthen his position, [the defendant] had been refusing to fix the shower, which he himself had damaged by punching a hole in the wall, unless she allowed him to enter.
Also, he had either taken or damaged some of her jewellery and was refusing to replace it, unless she agreed to his request,” Judge Cameron said.
The judge noted the length of the strangulation, the fact it was preceded by an attempt to have sex, and that the woman lost consciousness.
He adopted a starting point of three years’ and three months’ imprisonment.
This was uplifted by three months for the assault with intent to injure charge.
While the man’s lawyer Bill Nabney sought a discount for good character, which related to letters of support, the judge declined to give this discount.
He did not believe the man to be of good character, and referred to the man’s previous convictions.
The Crown had submitted any good character discount was “utterly off the table”, as the man had 29 previous convictions.
This included three for family violence, which he had received while awaiting trial for current offending.
It was not appropriate to have a discount for remorse, either in the Crown’s view, though Nabney said that in situations where there were mixed verdicts, it was difficult.
He said his client did take responsibility for the offending for which he had been convicted, but maintained his innocence on the more serious charges for which he had been acquitted.
The judge declined to apply a discount for remorse and rehabilitative efforts.
However, the man was given a 5% discount for $1000 emotional harm reparation, which his mother agreed to pay immediately on his behalf.
He received an end sentence of three years and four months imprisonment.
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.