A Southland man is accused of making a throat-slitting gesture at his former partner, a year after he assaulted her.
Glen Nathan Chapman, 48, is on trial in the Invercargill District court facing two charges of breaching a protection order by behaving in a way that amounted to psychological abuse.
The jury yesterday heard the protection order was imposed after Chapman was convicted of assaulting a female and assaulting the complainant with intent to injure her last year.
The complainant told police she saw Chapman driving towards her and then stick two fingers up at her, shouting abuse.
She subsequently pulled over and her son started crying, she told the court.
The second allegation was that on January 30, while getting petrol at the Gore BP, the complainant saw the defendant drive past in his girlfriend’s red Ford Focus. She said she saw him raise his middle finger and then make a throat-slicing gesture with his thumb.
CCTV showed the complainant getting out of her car and, after a red car drove past, doing a double-take and using her phone.
The Crown said the moment shown on video was when she was calling police.
Defence counsel Scott Williamson said it was impossible for his client to make both hand gestures in the "three seconds" it took him to drive past in the 70kmh zone.
He also said the complainant was a "convicted liar", referring to her 2011 conviction for making a false statement to police.
The court also heard the protected woman’s father was previously on trial for damaging Chapman’s house, on January 26, days before the woman reported her second allegation.
The man was found not guilty of the offence.
Chapman’s current partner gave evidence that upon leaving the father’s trial in January the two rival parties crossed paths in a carpark, where the complainant told her she was "gonna get it".
In her closing argument, Crown prosecutor Mary-Jane Thomas stressed the complainant was only 18 when she was convicted of lying to the police.
In his closing address, Mr Williamson said: "It’s one thing to say people lie ... but do you lie to the police?"
Ms Thomas quoted the complainant as saying "I just want him to leave us alone" as reason for the protection order in the first place and questioned why she would have lied about the psychological abuse.
"She just wants to be left alone, so that when she drives about town, she doesn’t have somebody making gestures at her and her kid gets upset," Ms Thomas said.
Judge Russell Walker will sum up the case this morning before the jury retires to consider its verdicts.
