‘I couldn’t really breathe’

A child says she remembers how difficult it was to breathe when a man allegedly tied a plastic bag over her head. She also says her mother has no idea she was allegedly touched by the same man. A man is on trial in the Palmerston North District Court, charged with assaulting, threatening and ill-treating two children, as well as raping a woman. The names of the defendant and the complainants, and how they met, are suppressed. The girl spent yesterday giving evidence via a CCTV link, talking about various incidents of violence the man allegedly committed. One involved a plastic shopping bag being put over her head. She said the man did not hold it there, but tied the handles together and told her to see how long she could hold her breath. ‘‘I couldn’t really breathe with the plastic bag on my head.’’ The bag would go into her mouth when she tried to breathe, choking her, she said. ‘‘I was trying to rip the bag off ... [the man] would say to leave it alone.’’ Defence lawyer Peter Foster tried to clear up how long she thought the bag was on her head. Between a police interview and her time in court, the timing varied from 20 minutes to 40 minutes, he said. She said she was not too sure about the timing. ‘‘I just felt like it had been on for a while and I was struggling to breathe.’’ She also spoke about the man indecently assaulting her when she was younger than 10. The man asked her to get into the car so they could go somewhere, she said. He then parked the car before touching her inappropriately, she said. ‘‘He wouldn’t stop when I asked him to stop. ‘‘He would tell me to shut up. ‘‘I looked at him, scared, and shut my mouth because I’m scared he would hurt me.’’ She said she never told anyone about the touching, not even her mother, because she did not think anyone would believe her. The man is charged with assaulting the girl, who said she was given bruises on her thighs, arms, chest, back and bottom from his punches and kicks. She went to the local swimming pool often, but said no-one commented about her bruises. She got them in different places at different times, depending on how the man had hit her, she said. One bruise on her bottom stayed for nine weeks, making it sore to sit down. ‘‘I would just lower myself slowly before sitting,’’ she said. ‘‘One person asked if I was OK and I said I was.’’ There was a time she thought she should see a doctor after the man kicked her in the back, she said. ‘‘It was just hard to bend over.’’ Her mother likely saw it was causing her trouble, she said. The trial, before Judge Peter Rollo alone, continues.