A woman says she was brutally abused to make her take part in a three-month crime spree.
Antonia Deborah Ogilvie, also known as Rae, said she had been punched, kicked, and burned with cigarettes and drug utensils by a man who has already been sentenced as her co-offender.
She made a complaint to the police about the abuse, and gave DVD interviews about it after her arrest, while she was being held in custody.
Crown prosecutor Klaudia Courteney told Christchurch District Court Judge Paul Kellar that she had checked with the police who had investigated her complaint but closed the inquiry in October without a prosecution.
Defence counsel Rachel Wood said a doctor had examined Ogilvie and his report provided some corroboration of the abuse she talked about. She had no previous criminal convictions.
Judge Kellar said he was prepared to give the abuse claims “some weight” at the sentencing, because of the complaint she had made to the police. He also noted she had no previous convictions. “Had you not met him (the co-offender) you might not have been standing there today.”
He made an allowance for her acting “under duress or coercion or domination of the co-offender” when she committed some of the offending. She had admitted 21 charges, but the Crown pointed out that in 12 of the offences she had acted alone.
The 34-year-old has admitted four charges of obtaining accommodation at motels and leaving without paying, stealing items from the motels, theft of a car, and receiving a stolen car, burglary of a motel and a house from where she had been evicted, and a series of petrol thefts and drugs charges.
Judge Kellar said almost all the offending was planned and premeditated. Her offending caused losses and damage totalling about $30,000 and she was ordered to pay back more than $14,000 of it.
Ogilvie is unemployed and has been ordered to make the payments at $25 a week.
Judge Kellar made allowances for her “clean” record, her guilty pleas, and for 10 months spent on restrictive bail conditions, and decided that home detention could be allowed.
He put her on home detention in Christchurch, for 10 months with six months of special conditions to follow the completion of the sentence.
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