MONTHS before she was detained and tortured in the back shed of a home at Mount Hutton, a woman was allegedly stabbed in the face with a syringe in the same shed, a jury has heard.
The woman last week gave evidence in the trial of two of her accused captors, Kyna 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 on May 5 and 6, 2021.
But months before she was allegedly detained, the woman said she was confronted by Ms McAuley in the shed after one of Ms McAuley's children found a blood-filled syringe in the house.
"She accused me of putting it there," the woman gave evidence. "I didn't put anything there. I didn't know where it came from. "She was screaming at me. I had nothing to hide. "Before I knew it she lunged at me and stabbed me in the face with the syringe."
The woman said the syringe was "filled with blood" and claimed Ms McAuley "pushed" it in so it was "injected into my skin".
"It was so painful, I fell to the ground," the woman said. "When I looked up she was standing over me with a golf club and holding it like she was going to hit me with it."
On Thursday, the jury heard evidence from a witness inside the shed at the time of the alleged syringe attack, who claimed she heard Ms McAuley say: "If you're lying to me, I'll stab you in the face with it".
"And she ended up stabbing her in the face with it," the witness said.
The witness said she didn't see Ms McAuley stab the woman with the syringe, but heard the woman shriek and ran over there to see her now holding the syringe "with blood all over her face".
The woman told the jury last week that she moved out of Ms McAuley's house at Mount Hutton after the alleged syringe attack, but they reconciled and she moved back in within a week.
On May 4, 2021, after taking Xanax and falling asleep behind the wheel, the woman caused a minor car accident while driving around Ms McAuley's young daughter.
The accident angered Ms McAuley who sent a number of messages to the witness, first asking for the woman to "have a backbone" and come and see her about the accident and then saying she was not welcome at the house.
When the witness drove the woman to the house at Mount Hutton on the night of the crash, Ms McAuley came outside and struck the car with a mailbox, the witness gave evidence on Thursday.
They drove off, but the woman wanted to return and ultimately walked from Merewether to Mount Hutton, let herself inside 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 alleged victim 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.
The jury also heard on Thursday from a man who answered the door to the woman in the early hours of May 6.
He said she looked like she had been "bashed up pretty bad".
"Her left eye was closed right over," he said. "She had a fair bit of blood coming out of her nose and mouth, blood coming out of her ears. "She was pretty rattled, nervous."
The woman, he said, told them not to phone the cops but used their phone to call for a lift.
A few days later, the woman spoke to her step-father about what had happened and he urged her to report the abduction at the next meeting she had with her community corrections officer.
"She looked shocking," the woman's step-father gave evidence on Thursday. "Two black eyes, chipped tooth, marks down the side of her head, like scald marks."
He said the woman was reluctant to tell him what happened, but eventually divulged that she had been: "taken to a shed, restrained, held for a couple of days while she had been beaten and scalded and she had passed in and out, then wrapped in a tarp and dumped in the bush."
The woman's step-father said she told him it had happened at Kyna's house.
Ms McAuley has also pleaded not guilty to a charge in relation to the alleged syringe attack and denied a 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.
