Lifting lid on violence in the home

Nov 29 2009 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

He said: “She used to attack me all the time, hit me, rip my coats. Sometimes she’d start a row in the street and I’d get away from her because I didn’t want people watching.

“She said in court that several assaults were caused by me, but it was all her. She said I hit her with a mobile phone, but it’s just lies. On October 7 2007 she smashed a phone over my head and I ended up in hospital.

“If trouble comes to me I walk away . . . I don’t even argue with anyone. I’d tell her I didn’t want any more rows and she’d say ‘I know, I don’t want to do it’.

“We split up for a bit but then we stupidly got back together. I hoped we could work it out . . . I loved her.”

On the fateful night when the attack took place in July 2008, the pair had enjoyed a pub lunch and a seafront stroll before having a few drinks and going shopping.

But a row broke out when they stopped in a pub on the way back to the rented Harbour View flat they shared.

Back home, the row continued and Terry said: “My way of dealing with it was to simply walk away, so I said ‘right, I’m away, I’m going’ and I went to get my shoes.

“She stabbed me in the arm and then she just went into a frenzied attack. She chased me all around the room and the rest of the flat – she stabbed me eight times – and there was blood in all the rooms and all over the walls. There was a fountain spraying out of the wound in my right arm.

“I opened the spare room window and shouted for help but she stabbed me in the stomach, shut the window, turned the volume up on the TV to cover up any sound and took all the phones away so I couldn’t call for help.

“I was lying on the blood, slipping in and out of consciousness, pleading with her to get help but she just sat at the end of the bed and said I wasn’t going anywhere.

“It was as if she wanted me to die because she wasn’t getting any help. At one point I woke up and could smell smoke . . . she was trying to set fire to the bed but it was so saturated with my blood that it wouldn’t light.

“I told her ‘You’re going to have to get help, I’m going to die if you don’t’ and she said ‘no, I’ll get in trouble’, but I told her she’d get done for murder if I died.”

Since then Terry has been trying to rebuild his life and hopes to get some closure when she is sentenced, on a date to be fixed.