Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
A well known New Zealand musician on trial over multiple domestic violence charges has been asked about evidence to back-up claims about his former partner having a borderline personality disorder (BPD).
The defendant, who has name suppression, is on trial at the Auckland District Court over four charges of assault on a person in a family relationship, two charges of threatening to kill, two charges of assault with a weapon, suffocation, and threatening to do grievous bodily harm - tracking back to events that happened in 2022.
Earlier, Judge Simon Lance and a jury of eight men and three women heard evidence from the complainant that she had been strangled, punched, and sometimes trapped in a situation for hours as her former partner verbally lashed out at her.
Defence lawyer Susan Gray argued that the defendant only used physical force in self defence but had never "initiated violence".
On Wednesday, during cross-examination by Crown's lawyer Emma Barnes, the defendant said he'd suffered abuse as a result of his former partner's BPD.
When asked by Barnes "You know [she] was never diagnosed with BPD?", the defendant admitted that, but maintained that he was told by his former partner she had the condition.
"She believes she had it, you can have something and not be diagnosed with it," he said.
The defendant said the complainant would talk about her BPD in texts, and refer to her fear of abandonment, which is one of the symptoms.
Earlier on Tuesday, the complainant had conceded that she had told the defendant about her anxiety and depression.
She told the court that she had in the past apologised to him after being assaulted, due to being manipulated by him into feeling that everything was her fault.
When asked by Barnes "I suggest you gas-lit her with her mental health issues, what do you say to that?", the defendant said:
"I really don't know how to respond to that. She told me she believed she had BPD, she told our therapist that.
"It was my experience of our relationship, was consistent with that.
"I never gaslit her," he said.
When Barnes put to the defendant that the complainant said he told her she was "cooked" and "belonged in a mental hospital", the defendant denied it.
"I cared about her mental health," said the defendant, and referred to instances when he encouraged her to join him in mindful meditation classes, and arranged counselling for them as a couple.
At one point when repeatedly pressed by Barnes on whether he had gas-lit his former partner, the defendant said "[She] was the one who gas-lit in our relationship... I don't care if it was diagnosed or undiagnosed, all I'm dealing with is these constant episodes of intense anger, verbal and emotional abuse, physical abuse," he said.
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