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Newcastle Herald
Newcastle Herald
National
Sam Rigney

'Sounds like a movie': alleged torture victim denies lying about what happened inside Mount Hutton shed

Kyna McAuley is on trial accused of detaining and assaulting a woman at Mount Hutton in May, 2021.

A WOMAN who claims she was detained and tortured at Mount Hutton in 2021 has denied suggestions she lied about what happened inside a back shed and "came up with an elaborate story" to pin the assaults on Kyna McAuley.

The woman has spent the last two days giving evidence in the trial of two of her accused captors, Ms McAuley and Madden Paynter, telling the jury she was repeatedly assaulted and threatened, tied up, struck in the head with what she thought was a hammer, had her teeth knocked out, burnt with a cigarette and had boiling water poured over her head during the 24 hours she was held in the shed in Kestrel Avenue in May, 2021.

The woman said she was terrified she was going to be killed and wet her pants when Mr Paynter allegedly pinned her down and held out her arm while Ms McAuley started a grinder and approached "as if she was going to cut off her arm".

The jury has heard the alleged kidnapping and assault stemmed from a minor car accident that the woman had while driving around the young daughter of Ms McAuley.

The woman admitted on Thursday that she took a Xanax tablet before the crash and said she must have fallen asleep behind the wheel. She was later charged with driving with an illicit drug present in her blood.

Ms McAuley was angry about the crash, the jury heard, and used a letterbox to smash up a car containing the woman when she returned from the police station.

She left but despite being warned not to go back to the house in Kestrel Avenue, the woman later walked from Merewether to Mount Hutton, let herself into the house and fell asleep.

She said she was woken by Ms McAuley striking her with a children's toy and ordering her to get up and go outside to the shed.

"I knew instantly I had made a mistake," the woman said during her evidence. "I should not have come here."

She claims she was then detained and repeatedly assaulted for about 24 hours before she was dumped near bushland at Eleebana.

Under cross-examination from Ms McAuley's barrister Russell Boyd on Friday, the woman denied suggestions she lied in her evidence about what happened inside the shed and implicated Ms McAuley because of "frustrations" she had with her relationship with Ms McAuley.

"It didn't really matter how you got those injuries, you wanted her to be front and centre for being responsible for all of them," Mr Boyd said. "So you came up with an elaborate story. "You took bits of events that did happen and pieced them into something that didn't happen."

The woman denied the suggestions and also refuted an alternative version of what happened inside the shed, put to her by Mr Boyd.

In that version, Mr Boyd suggested Ms McAuley and the woman had a fight in the shed over the car accident, but Ms McAuley left within minutes and had no contact with her until later that night.

Mr Boyd said the woman's version "sounds like a movie", referencing her claims about being hit with a hammer and threatened with a grinder.

"None of that happened, did it," Mr Boyd said. "You're making all that up."

The woman disagreed.

Ms McAuley and Mr Paynter have pleaded not guilty to a charge of take or detain in company with intent to obtain advantage and occasion actual bodily harm in relation to the kidnapping and Ms McAuley has also denied injecting the woman with a blood-filled syringe in relation to an earlier incident.

She also pleaded not guilty to another charge of influencing a witness relating to messages she sent a co-accused that the prosecution say were intended to get him to change his story.

The trial continues.

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