A Dublin woman accused of murdering her violent partner sobbed in the witness box in the Central Criminal Court as she detailed years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the deceased.
Ms Jacqui Noble, who is jointly accused of the murder of Derek Benson, told how Benson used his fists, feet and objects during the beatings. In a harrowing and emotional account, she detailed to the court various acts of depravity that Benson subjected her to, sometimes while tied to a bed or chair. He would then subject her to oral or anal sex.
The accused, who turned her face from the court while giving details of the sexual assaults, said her sisters were unaware of the extent of the abuse, as was her counsellor.
Questioned by Ms Mary Ellen Ring SC, defending, she said the violence began six months after she met Derek Benson when she was about 16: "He gave me a kick into the face at Halloween, he busted my eye". She subsequently became pregnant but had an abortion on her mother's advice. Her parents warned her to keep away from him because of his violence, she said.
She later became pregnant again by him and had a daughter.
At the christening Benson became very drunk, smashed the windows in her parents' house and bit her father on the back. "To the day he died he had two bite marks on his back," she said.
On another occasion, "he spilt my eye open" because, she explained, his stew was "not right on the plate".
Many times, she added, "he'd hit me in the back where no-one else would see." "Would he use fists?" Counsel asked.
"Fists, feet whatever he could get his hands on", the accused replied.
Ms Ring asked if the deceased was violent towards his daughter. The accused recalled one incident, when the child was seven or eight, when she caught him kicking and punching her in the bedroom. The gardai were called and they took him away but he was back the next morning.
The accused told the court that she got a barring order against him but he broke it and assaulted a female garda in the process. Asked he she ever tried to leave she replied: "lots of times, but he always told me if I left he'd find me anywhere and he'd cut [their child] up in front of me and he'd cut me up."
"This was your daughter?" she was asked. "His daughter as well," the accused replied.
Asked if she ever had reason to get the child medically examined, the accused replied that around 1993, her daughter's school principal expressed concerns about her behaviour. She brought her to Temple Street for assessment:
"They said that she was after being penetrated and that something was after happening to her." As a result, the gardai were called in, she said.
The trial continues tomorrow.