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A woman who was subject to a Southland man’s terrifying five-year campaign of domestic violence says the ordeal “shattered my soul”.
Mark Robin Deans, 49, appeared in the Invercargill District Court on Tuesday where he was jailed for four years 11 months over an assortment of vicious attacks which included strangling his partner unconscious.
Judge Mark Williams outlined a protracted procedural history which had seen the defendant spend the last three years behind bars, leaving him with an imminent appearance before the Parole Board.
A jury trial was aborted in November last year, then in June the victim was undergoing a pre-recorded cross-examination (which would have been played for a jury at trial) when Deans pleaded guilty.
The woman stood at the front of the court on Tuesday and read her statement as she fought back tears.
“On one hand you were my best friend, on the other you were my tormentor.
"At the time it felt like you improved my life while you single-handedly destroyed it,” she said.
“It wasn’t always a matter of the bad outweighing the good but simply the barbarity of the bad that occurred.”
Since the end of the relationship in 2023, she had been diagnosed with complex PTSD and remained hypervigilant.
It was the verbal torment that had cut deepest, she said.
“Nothing that you did to me physically ever came close to the level of pain that your words caused.
“You didn’t just break me, you shattered my soul and killed my will to live.”
In sentencing, Judge Williams read an extensive summary of facts, which covered seven distinct incidents across the five-year relationship.
The first came in November 2018, when the pair were staying in a Wellington hotel.
Deans punched his girlfriend in the head, pushed her on to the bed, then made a violent sexual threat as she laid there, bleeding heavily.
Hospital records showed the woman had lied to protect her abuser, telling doctors she had slipped on a wet step and fallen downstairs.
The following month, Deans was drinking at home with a friend when he took exception to the victim asking him to cease his alcohol consumption.
When she retreated to a bedroom, he followed, forcing his hand against her throat as she lay down.
The woman wriggled free but Deans caught her and put her in a choke hold until she lost consciousness.
He threatened to kill her then rammed her head through a wall.
There were two other episodes of strangulation, an attack with a stool, a chainsaw, more wounds requiring medical attention.
In 2019, the victim woke her partner after his night shift, hoping they could spend time together.
Instead, Deans throttled her, dragged her to a porch and tore her clothes off.
The woman, covered in petrol — though court documents did not specify how that occurred — begged to be allowed to shower.
Deans hauled her into another room, punched her in the head and later pushed her into a shower door causing it to crack.
“When you were drunk, there was nothing behind your black eyes; the kicking, the punching, each blow you landed fed whatever devil that lived behind them.
"You enjoyed it, seeing the fear in me, it encouraged you.
"You would smile and ask me if it hurt,” the victim said.
Judge Williams heralded the woman’s “immense courage” in reading her statement in open court and said the ordeal must have been “terrifying”.
“This was a relationship that was clearly dysfunctional and fuelled by violence on your part,” he told Deans.
“Your actions over the course of this relationship will stay with her for many many years.”
Judge Williams referenced Deans extensive criminal history, which included violence, drugs, dishonesty and driving crimes but accepted counsel Anne Stevens KC’s suggestion the man had strong family support.
He granted a protection order in favour of the victim.