Your first paragraph is a fabrication. It was Gjert’s small towel.
This is what Ingrid testified:
Ingrid told the court she had planned to meet friends and “found it scary to even ask for permission”. After she went downstairs to tell Gjert she was leaving, “I was simply told that it wasn’t an option. I asked why, but there was no reason.
“By then, I had felt trapped in my own home for so long, and so much time had passed, so I didn’t accept the rejection. I pushed a little, and said, ‘Why am I not allowed?’
“Then he shoved his finger in my face, yelling. This had happened before, but since I had spent so many months being pushed down and ignored, I felt completely bullied. I pushed his finger away. I still don’t understand how I dared to do that.
“He had a small, wet towel in his hand. He whipped the towel toward me. The first time he missed, then he did it again, aiming for my face, and he hit right on my cheek.”
Ingrid said she froze, before Gjert “quickly realized that he had done something wrong. He looked very stressed,” starting to pace up and down the hallway. It was then that she ran to the house of older brother Henrik and his wife Liva, who lived close by.
This is what Gjert testified:
However Gjert insisted that while he regretted the incident, his towel had only made contact with her finger.
“I’m drying my neck with a towel,” Gjert told the court in Sandnes, Norway. “She’s really angry and says: ‘I f-ing don’t want to be in this prison of yours any more,’ while holding her index finger at me.
“I pull the towel against her finger twice in quick succession. She then says: ‘What the hell are you doing, are you hitting me?’ To which I reply: ‘I didn’t hit you.’
Pressed by the judge about whether it really was only the finger that was struck, Gjert replied. “Yes, given the distance we were standing at, and the size of the towel, nothing else would be possible.”