Christian pop music producer Kodi James Maybir is currently on trial at the NSW Supreme Court for the alleged murder of his girlfriend’s seven year-old son.
According to Fairfax, Maybir is on trial for murder on top of 13 other charges for allegedly subjecting the boy to months of physical abuse resulting in his death at Maybir’s southern Sydney recording studio.
Crown prosecutor Chris Maxwell said that Maybir had killed the boy by inflicting blunt force trauma to his head before 21st May, 2013.
“It is the Crown case that Mr Maybir in some fashion assaulted the seven-year-old causing significant blunt force injuries with fractures to the skull,” Maxwell told the court.
Maybir reportedly referred to himself as a “saviour” and was training the boy to be a “soldier for christ” which resulted in months of a “bizarre” religion-inspired discipline regime. The boy was allegedly subject to a series of horrifying assaults in the months before his death many of which were recorded on a mobile phone.
“In these videos the deceased was the subject either of discipline measures or some kind of target or participant in his extreme attempt at building discipline,” Maxwell said.
One video supposedly features the boy being beaten by his siblings at the request of Maybir who is heard laughing in the video. “Oh, it’s fun, you’re having fun,” he is also allegedly heard saying. In another, Maybir tells the boy’s mother Kayla James to spank her son with a wooden plank.
James has already been convicted and sentenced for manslaughter by gross criminal negligence and will give evidence against Maybir during the trial.
Maybir has pleaded not guilty to murder. He has, however, pleaded guilty to six of the other charges including assault and using the boy to producer child abuse material.
