Girlfriend may have ‘fallen down stairs’, accused says

“Maybe she fell down the stairs,” the boyfriend of a Chiselhurst woman suggested to an East London magistrate after admitting that she had fractured three ribs after he broke into her flat and pinned her to the floor.

Curwin Koert, who was testifying in the East London magistrate’s court, is charged with contravening a protection order and assaulting the woman. He pleaded not guilty. On Wednesday, the court heard that the lovers had begun fighting after Koert accused the woman of performing sexual acts with two men outside a Pefferville nightclub in August.

When asked by magistrate Tinky Shete whether he’d witnessed his girlfriend doing this, he admitted he was irked by merely seeing his girlfriend talking to the men.

Their verbal confrontation had turned physical, but Koert denied laying hands on the woman. Instead he said she viciously attacked him.

“So the reason this whole episode happened is because in your mind, you thought you saw oral sex taking place between your girlfriend and the two men she was with,” Shete asked.

Koert said he’d thought it “inappropriate” she was talking to the men in his absence.

He said the morning, after their night out, he gained entry to the flat he shared with her and their children. Once inside, he said, he pinned her down and demanded an apology.

When asked by the state prosecutor how the woman had sustained her injuries, Koert said: “Maybe she fell down the stairs outside our flat or in the bathroom . . . maybe this is her way of getting rid of me.”