"I did not mean to kill him," the Kildare woman accused of unlawfully killing her partner by stabbing him with a steak knife, has told a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury.
"I just thought I had nicked him. I wish he was alive today," 41-year-old Ms Nicola Brereton said on the sixth of her manslaughter trial. She said she had struck out at him with the knife because she was afraid of him and felt she was in danger.
"I loved him. I loved him till the day he died," she told her counsel Mr Gerry O'Brien SC in direct evidence. She was deeply sorry and wanted to apologise to all his family.
Ms Brereton, from Church Street, Kilcock, has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter on September 14th, 2001 of 52-year-old John Smullen.
She described Mr Smullen as "a very violent man" who had assaulted her several times during the nine years of their relationship. She recounted for the jury various occasions when he had allegedly beaten her up.
Ms Brereton said Mr Smullen had once assaulted both her and a man in a wheelchair whom she was helping to care for. She had volunteered at the Irish Wheelchair Association for over eight years and was out for a pre-Christmas drink with one of its members when Mr Smullen accused her of "f***ing around with a wheelchair man".
She said the man had given her a lift to her house and she had brought a cup of tea down to his car when Mr Smullen appeared on the scene and assaulted them both. She said the other man suffered various injuries as a result of the assault and needed hospitalisation
Ms Brereton, who had been in a country music band with her six siblings since she was 12 years of age and had begun a solo pub singing career at the age of 18, also recounted for the jury incidents where Mr Smullen allegedly attacked her because he was suspicious about her relationships with her agents.
She said Mr Smullen left Ireland shortly after he had assaulted the man in the wheelchair and she accompanied him to England where they lived in Manchester for a year. She had gone to an audition there where an agent had remarked she was "a very sexy woman, but needed to loose a bit of weight".
Ms Brereton said Mr Smullen had taken offence at the remark and threw her down a flight of stairs, leaving her with injuries that required her to be in hospital for a week.
She alleged that a similar incident happened in Blackpool when she had a new agent who wanted to give her the stage name of "Nicky Violet" and thought she was "very pretty." Ms Brereton said Mr Smullen asked the agent if he fancied her and he had said "No."
She said this time Mr Smullen had imprisoned her in their flat for three days during which he had thrown a bottle of boiling water on her face, burnt her face with cigarettes and stabbed her back and a foot with a screwdriver, causing her to loose at least three pints of blood.
She reported the assault to English police but had withdrawn the charges immediately before the trial because "his family made threats against me, that if I pressed ahead with the charges, I would never walk the streets again".
Ms Brereton said she and Mr Smullen returned to Ireland in September 1998 and about six or seven weeks before the stabbing, they had ended their relationship amicably. He left their shared apartment and she had a brief relationship with another man for about two or three weeks.