"The day you came wanting to take my life you were dead to me and my children," the victim told Anthony Noel Kloosterman at the Dunedin District Court yesterday, where he was jailed for nearly six years.
It was not the first time the 30-year-old had seriously assaulted the woman. In September 2017, he was jailed for two and a-half years over an incident in Omakau where he attacked her with a metal pole.
Four years later, Kloosterman received 12 months’ intensive supervision for further domestic crimes, and was barred from communicating with his former partner and GPS-monitored to ensure he remained at least 10km from her home.
On November 28, just weeks later, he spectacularly breached those orders.
After drinking for several hours with friends in Balclutha, Kloosterman realised his friends had left with his car keys, so he used a pair of scissors to cut off his tracker. He walked into the car park of the clubrooms where he had been socialising and found a Mazda with the keys in the ignition.
Taking the "back roads" to avoid police, Kloosterman made the 60km trip to see his ex. His drunken driving attracted several complaints and a member of the public tried to take the keys off him at Tuapeka Mouth.
About 8am the defendant arrived at his destination, and the violence was immediate.
"The look of pure hate that I was met with ... is as vivid as if it happened yesterday," the victim said.
As soon as she opened the front door, the woman was punched by Kloosterman several times in the face, causing her to bleed profusely.
While she sought refuge in the lounge, the defendant retrieved a paring knife and a rolling pin from the kitchen.
After forcing her at knifepoint to make a phone call, Kloosterman began kicking her legs. As she lay on the floor, he punched her, feigned stabbing her and struck her with the rolling pin, the court heard.
One of the children who witnessed the brutal attack told him to stop but it had little effect.
"Wait till I get out, I will come back with my gun and blow you away," Kloosterman told his ex-partner.
"A protection order is just a piece of paper."
Such was the severity of the violence meted out, there was blood pooled on the carpet and "splattered" on the lounge walls.
The victim said she lost count of the number of blows, which stopped only when the rolling pin snapped and the defendant dislocated his shoulder.
She eventually fled to a local church and Kloosterman was arrested. He had a breath-alcohol level of 594mcg — more than twice the legal limit — but it was his subsequent comments that were most surprising.
"Next time it will be worse, there be a next time if this carries on, I will die for my kids, or spend my life in jail. I will end up killing her if this carries on," he said.
The victim said she now had parallel scars on her face from two separate incidents. Her children were in constant flight mode and one slept with a Nerf gun.
"It breaks my heart," she said.
Kloosterman was convicted of aggravated burglary, wounding with intent to injure, unlawfully taking a vehicle, breaching a protection order, drink-driving and two counts of threatening to kill.
Counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner said he had grown up in a home where domestic violence was pervasive and was motivated to undertake rehabilitation.
Judge David Robinson sentenced Kloosterman to five years, 10 months’ imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of two years, 11 months.
