The defendant, aged in his 40s, spent the first two days of this week on trial before the Dunedin District Court on two charges of breaching a protection order.
The man had an order suppressing his name and occupation continued.
Yesterday, Judge Hermann Retzlaff found the defendant guilty of one charge and cleared him of the other.
He found that the defendant was aware of the protection order, and the complainant gave credible evidence about the incidents.
The court heard the married man had met the woman through work in 2020 before they started a long-distance affair the following year.
The complainant said she ended things in March 2023 but it was not taken well by her former lover.
‘‘He just continued to message me, asking for explanations why, and trying to manipulate me back into continuing things on.’’
She said she only remained in contact with him to ‘‘manage his behaviour’’ but conceded there had never been any violence or threats throughout their relationship.
The woman was granted two police safety orders in 2023, which barred the defendant from contacting her, before a protection order was made by the court in September that year.
The first alleged breach came just days after the order came into force.
The complainant and her mother were having coffee outside St Clair’s Long Dog Cafe when the man arrived.
She told the court he had given her a ‘‘piercing look’’ before turning around and leaving the area.
But counsel Anne Stevens KC suggested her client had been wearing sunglasses and had retreated as soon as he saw the woman, without comment or gesture.
The complainant had been aware her ex had been at the cafe earlier that day and she had returned in the hope of bumping into him, Mrs Stevens claimed.
The complainant denied that was the case.
Judge Retzlaff found the defendant responded reasonably in the situation and could not be sure if the meeting was intentional.
The judge found the man not guilty on that charge.
The second charge arose from the events of January 2024 when the defendant again arrived at St Clair and passed the complainant in his vehicle as she sat at a different cafe.
She described him as giving her the same ‘‘intimidating’’ glare.
The same day, the defendant — who was captured on CCTV — passed his ex again as he was running along the Esplanade and later went surfing in the same vicinity as the woman.
‘‘I remember thinking it was weird he was still in the area after having seen me there,’’ the complainant said.
She described having a panic attack and hurriedly leaving the water to make a call to a police officer she knew.
The dispute at trial hinged on whether the man knew the complainant frequented the coastal spots.
While there was little concerning the matter in the 55,000 messages the pair exchanged over their two-year relationship, the woman said she had made clear her strong links to St Clair during conversations.
Judge Retzlaff said the defendant must have known about the woman’s strong links to the area given the length of their affair.
Judge Retzlaff found that entering the beach near where the defendant had earlier seen the victim was an ‘‘intentional’’ decision and noted that the defendant passed two alternative entrances he could have used.
‘‘He knew very well that he had seen the complainant there earlier,’’ Judge Retzlaff said.
‘‘Her reaction was explicable and credible’’.
Judge Retzlaff found the defendant guilty on the second charge of breaching a protection order.
The defendant was remanded on bail and will be sentenced in May.
At a trial in August, the man was also found guilty of possessing an objectionable publication — footage of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
No convictions were entered following the trials, giving the man an opportunity to make an application for a discharge without conviction.
