A Dundee mum-of-two sobbed as she told a jury an ex-boyfriend had drowned her pet parakeet in the kitchen sink.
The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said she took her children to her mum’s after she caught Paul Hill having sex with another woman in her bed.
Soon after, she said Hill called and said that if she didn’t return home he would kill the 18-year-old bird.
She said: “I didn’t believe him. I stayed at my mum’s. I went home later on that night because I knew he wasn’t in the house.
“When I went home that night the kids went into the house and they saw there was only one bird in the cage. They found the parrot drowned in the kitchen sink. He drowned it, because the sink was filled up with water.”
The 38-year-old gave evidence from behind a screen at the High Court at Livingston.
Hill is accused of 24 offences over a period of 28 years, including several counts of rape and assault.
During their relationship she said Hill had initially treated her well but then became violent, hitting her “more than once a day”.
She told the court: “He became evil, losing his temper all the time, nasty and drinking.”
The woman claimed she was repeatedly raped and beaten by Hill.
Once, she alleged, when she failed to cook a steak to his liking, he stabbed her in the back of the hand with a serrated steak knife leaving a scar.
While pregnant she said he kicked her down a flight of stairs and battered her head off a cooker door.
She claimed that in another attack at her Dundee flat he bit her on the ear and shoulder, and had strangled her for the first of many times when her youngest child was two or three.
She said: “He was hitting me, punching me on the head and face. Then he put his hands around my throat and started choking me.
“It was so hard he was squeezing I felt my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die.”
She told the court: “He’d call me fat. He’d call me ugly, worthless, stupid, mostly when he drank.”
She also accused Hill of sexually assaulting her numerous times. Once, she said, he raped her in the bedroom while her friend sat in the living room holding her baby as she screamed.
Hill, 54, from Ayr, faces 24 charges including seven counts of rape and five of assault to danger of life. The alleged offences date from January 1987 to October 2015.
In addition to allegations of a string of abductions, assaults and disturbances, the prosecution also accuses Hill of drowning the parrot, causing a kitten’s death by unknown means, throwing another woman’s cat out of a window, and threatening to injure a dog.
He denies all the allegations and has lodged special defences saying the women involved consented to sex and one alleged assault had been in self-defence.
The trial, before Lord Mulholland, continues.
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