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The Press HIGH SOCIETY: Peter
Stewart and his wife Pieter
Pieter Stewart made
an elegant figure as she walked across the soft carpet to the panelled
witness box in the High Court in Christchurch. All eyes were on her
and her Louis Vuitton handbag, in which she reputedly carries a touchstone
amethyst. Tall, tanned,
immaculate in black slacks, a black top and a camel-coloured cropped jacket,
she sat down, donned her stylish, black-rimmed spectacles and prepared to
defend her husband of 39 years. Although the
remarkably young-looking 61-year-old apparently meditates every morning, she
would have needed more than 30 minutes of "ohmmmmm" to gird herself
for this low moment in a life usually lit by the glamour of belonging to one
of Christchurch's richest families, and by being in charge of glitzy New
Zealand Fashion Week. No, she told the
court, she had never seen her husband have any sexual or inappropriate
contact with the complainant, now 48, who was alleging "kind,
patient" Peter had sexually abused her over a 10-year period. Nor had she ever
suspected anything, she told defence lawyer Jonathan Eaton. No, a pink vibrator
mentioned by the complainant was not hers. No, she could not
see how any of the alleged incidents could have happened without her knowing. She was steadfast
and unflustered. In business, she is regarded as tough, calm, pragmatic and
self-contained, and in the witness box it showed. Three days after her
evidence, the jury of six men and six women found Peter Stewart, farmer,
motor racer and luxury-yacht skipper, guilty of sexually molesting the
complainant when she was under 12 and of raping her and sodomising her after
she turned 13. Pieter Stewart, like
her husband, looked unbelieving. But, in court anyway, she held up. No tears. The stain of the
allegations crept into the Stewart household in March 2004 when a relative
told Pieter Stewart that a woman the Stewarts had known most of their lives
was accusing Peter Stewart of having sex with her when she was only 14. Furious, Pieter
Stewart accosted her husband with the allegation, which he met with a shocked
denial. She then asked him
if he had ever had sex with the complainant. He had, he confessed
shamefacedly, but only on one occasion when she was 17. Pieter Stewart hit
the roof. "You disgusting
bastard," she said. He took off for the
night, but slowly they patched things up and carried on. The couple first met
at the Christchurch races during Show Week in 1967 when Pieter McKenzie,
educated at St Margaret's College, still lived at home in the slightly seedy
Zetland Hotel in Cashel Street that her parents owned. Peter Stewart liked
fast cars, was dashing and charming and had a playboy reputation. Already with his own
farm at Hawarden, his courtship with Pieter was hindered by the fact he had
lost his licence and by other obstacles. If she wanted to
stay overnight at the farm, her mother, Joan, said to be strict, insisted she
was chaperoned. When Stewart stayed with the McKenzies, he was given a hotel
room. Within a year the
couple were married and by 1970 had moved to a more substantial spread at
Hororata. Pieter Stewart did a
bit of modelling for pocket money, but soon the first of four children was on
the way and she spent the next 10 years bringing up her young family. An associate, who
has known the family for years, says Pieter Stewart was an ideal farmer's
wife but always wanted to stand on her own two feet and "create her own
career". In 1979 she bought a
model agency from friend Paula Ryan and ran it as Pieter's Modelling Agency
before selling it in 1985 to be associate editor of Fashion Quarterly. In the late 1980s
she started a public relations and promotion firm and held voluntary posts
with the Child Cancer Foundation of Canterbury and the Hororata branch of the
National Party. She organised and produced television fashion events (Corbans
then Wella) throughout the 1990s. New Zealand Fashion
Week, a forum for designers to show their wares to international buyers and
media, and a big excuse for a fashion party with all the trimmings, grew out
of those shows and is now touted as New Zealand's biggest event. It started in 2001
and continues to get bigger and better. The company that
owns the event is solely owned by Pieter Stewart, although Peter Stewart's
stepmother, Lady Stewart, is a director. Peter Stewart has
always been proud of his wife's achievements. In court, he called her
talented and successful and emphasised that she was a wealthy woman in her
own right, with several properties in New Zealand. Friends say he has
been fully supportive of her efforts and is her biggest fan. A business contact
of the family says Peter Stewart can come across as an "arrogant
p...." but that was not uncommon in people who had always been
surrounded by money. "Once you get
behind that he really is not a bad guy," the businessman says. To an extent, the
couple have lived separate lives for many years, with Peter Stewart based in
Picton to run his luxury-yacht business and Pieter Stewart living in Auckland
to be close to the Fashion Week office. The couple regularly get together at
Hororata for family weekends. To outsiders, it
seemed an unusual arrangement, but a friend says it seemed to work. Their plans for
coming years included sailing around the world, and they looked forward to
grandchildren. Instead, Pieter
Stewart will probably be visiting her husband in a Christchurch prison. She will, as always,
cope, insiders say. Pieter Stewart is "tremendously loyal" to her
family and to those she works with, a friend says. "Her family and
her husband are far too important to her to walk away. She would have gone by
now if she was going to go," the friend says. "She will stand by
Peter. She will visit him in jail if need be, do all the other things, and I
think you will find people will be overwhelmingly supportive of her." A businessman close
to the family says Peter Stewart may not cope as well. "He will do jail
hard." |