A Galway woman who is on trial for murder told the Central Criminal Court yesterday that she "went out of control" when her boyfriend insulted her dead sister and made obscene remarks about childhood sexual abuse.
The jury heard that Ms Kathleen Bell was sexually abused as an orphan by two different people and had also witnessed the abuse of her sister, Mary.
Mary had been married to the deceased man, Patrick Sammon, with whom Kathleen Bell was living at the time of his death. Separated from her husband for nine years, Mary died of a drug overdose two months before Kathleen stabbed Mr Sammon with a knife.
Ms Bell (36), of Camilaun Park, Rahoon, Galway, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Patrick Sammon (42) at her home on June 20th, 1997. She has admitted his manslaughter.
In evidence, Ms Bell told her defence counsel, Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, of how she had been sexually abused as a child, first by a female staff member in an orphanage in Moate, Co Westmeath, and then by the in-law of a Dublin couple she and her sister had been sent to at weekends.
Her first memory of the abuse in the Mount Carmel Orphanage was when she was nine or 10, but it could have been happening before that.
On one occasion, as she ran from the scene of a particular incident of abuse, the nun in charge of the orphanage saw her and she told the nun "everything". She never saw the perpetrator after that, she said.
She and her sister also used to go to a house in Dublin, where a married couple were "very kind" to them. However, the couple's son-in-law would expose himself to the girls as they lay in bed. Incidents of abuse occurred over a period of years.
Ms Bell said she witnessed her sister being abused also. On one occasion, when they both visited their natural mother in England, she saw her sister being abused by her mother's partner, the court heard.
Ms Bell also spoke of when a baby girl she gave birth to at the age of 16 was taken from her. "She was all I had", she told her counsel.
She showed the jury extensive scarring on her neck and arms caused by knife wounds. A large scar on her neck had been self-inflicted during her first marriage, the jury heard.
She said Patrick Sammon cut her arms with a knife, and on other occasions she slashed her wrists herself. She agreed that he once handed her a razor blade and told her he did not care what she did. He sat watching as she slashed her neck, the jury heard.
Ms Bell told her counsel that Patrick Sammon was "the best man in the world without drink, but a completely different person when he was drinking". She said she hated to talk about it, but he was "evil and violent with drink in him".
She said Patrick Sammon had "stuck a knife" in her leg once and up under her chin another time. Her mouth was "burst", her eye was damaged and her nose was "put out" on other occasions. She confirmed that she was hospitalised 51 times during their relationship. She agreed that she had once broken his jaw during a fight, but said: "I'd have no choice but to defend myself, because if I didn't I'd be stone dead."
She and Patrick Sammon got on "all right" in the months before she killed him, she said. "We had our arguments and fights, but that night everything seemed to go out of control." It upset her that he had asked her to marry him when they had just heard that her sister had died.
On the way to the toilet, she took a knife from the kitchen. "It was a knife I used to peel spuds. I don't know what made me do it. I told him he was doing my head in and driving me mad."
In the toilet, she hid the knife under her jumper, showing it to him when the argument continued on her return. "No way did I mean to kill him", she said.
Patrick Sammon had brought five or six cans of beer with him when he came to her house and he had drunk "the whole lot" by the time he was stabbed. She had had "around nine cans altogether".
Cross-examined by Mr Marcus daly SC, prosecuting, Ms Bell agreed that half of her 51 admissions to hospital were for treatment for injuries which were self-inflicted. Counting the wounds on her body, she said she had gone to hospital "14 or 15 times with such injuries".
The trial continues today.