Jail for stabbing mother’s partner

Judge gives discount on sentence after ‘warts and all’ cultural report outlines woman’s abusive upbringing

Awoman who nearly stabbed her mother’s boyfriend to death with a kitchen knife when she intervened in an incident between the couple has been jailed.

After being stabbed in the stomach, back and neck during the incident on February 9 this year, the man fled his girlfriend’s Kaikohe house and collapsed on a neighbour’s lawn.

People at the scene kept pressure on his wounds while they waited for a rescue helicopter to arrive.

He was flown to Auckland Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery, one of the stabs to his neck having narrowly missed an artery.

In a victim impact statement prepared for his attacker Crystal Reid’s sentencing in the Kaikohe District Court, the man said he believed he would make a full recovery, albeit he would always have scars.

He had been constantly monitored for three months due to the risk of the wounds rupturing as they healed and is still undergoing rehabilitation.

The incident had “tipped his life upside down”, the man said.

Judge Greg Davis jailed Reid, 38, for two years and nine months and gave her a three-strike warning.

She had pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after a sentence indication from the judge for a starting point of five and a half years imprisonment with a full 25 per cent plea discount.

The judge said it was not clear what prompted the attack but there had been a row between Reid’s mother and her partner that night.

The issue to be determined at the sentencing hearing was whether there should be further discounts for factors such as those raised in a cultural and a pre-sentence report, Judge Davis said.

It was accepted by all parties the end sentence would not come within a range that could be converted to an electronically monitored option.

He said the cultural report showed a clear link between the offending and intergenerational trauma and abuse Reid and her siblings experienced growing up — largely from men in their mother’s life.

He gave a 25 per cent discount for the matters raised in the report, including Reid’s use of drugs and alcohol, her background circumstance, and some mental health issues. It was 5 per cent more than the 20 per cent sought by Reid’s counsel, Catherine Cull.

Alcohol, drugs, and abuse were prevalent in Reid’s upbringing. Violence was normalised and a “way of life”, the judge said.

Reid’s parents were together most of the children’s lives until their father died. After that their mother had a series of male partners who continued the same patterns of abuse.

“When a person is exposed to a constant diet of violence, it’s fair to say one could also be exposed to the response to that violence and that for me is what underpins the cultural report,” the judge said.

He invited the author of the cultural report to speak to what Davis described as her “warts and all” account of Reid’s life.

The writer said it was difficult for people to talk about their past and she thanked Reid for her honesty during their interview.

The writer said Reid used alcohol and drugs to combat issues her whole life but all that did was put a lid on things and that lid was now blowing.

“I think Crystal spent a lot of time thinking about the help her mother needed and not seeing that as a reflection of her own self.”