A MAN accused of trying to stab his ex-partner to death told a jury he was a victim of her violent outbursts during their three-year relationship.

Benjamin Thompson, 26, denies attempting to murder Harriet de Raeve, 22, who was found at the house they shared in Hurst Street, East Oxford, with three deep stab wounds and a knife embedded in her chest.

Giving evidence in his defence yesterday, Thompson told Oxford Crown Court that Ms de Raeve was violent, lied about being assaulted by him, had become suicidal after losing a baby and owed him thousands of pounds.

The court heard Thompson, originally from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Ms de Raeve moved in together in Thorn Close, Kidlington, in 2007.

He said: “When we had arguments she would pick up things and throw them at me.

“Once it was a table... and she threw glasses at me.

“It became part of everyday life dealing with her screaming at me.”

A year later, the couple moved to Hurst Street, so that Ms de Raeve could be closer to her friends and to Oxford Brookes University, where she was studying physiotherapy.

Thompson said: “We were having an argument and she picked up a screwdriver and threw it at me.

“It just missed my head, hit a window and cracked the window.”

Thompson told the court he had paid the rent and all the household bills.

By November last year, Ms de Raeve owed him £7,000, he told the court.

He claimed that in another violent outburst she once threw a chest of drawers at him.

He said that after Ms de Raeve suffered a miscarriage, he found her sitting in front of the oven, saying she did not want to live.

Thompson told the jury he suspected Ms de Raeve had cheated on him while he was at a party in January, after he spotted her and a man leaving a toilet.

When he tried to stop her from drink-driving, she tried to strangle him, then reported him to the police for assault, Thompson added.

He was arrested, but never charged.

Thompson told the jury that just days before the incident in April he is charged over, he had thrown Ms de Raeve out of the house after learning that she was having a sexual relationship with another man.

Ms de Raeve told the court on Monday that Thompson had attacked her with a 6in serrated knife when she was at the house collecting her belongings.

She claimed he came up behind her and stabbed her in the chest.

After she had fallen on to the floor, he sat on her and drove the knife deep into her chest.

She added that he had then stabbed himself in the stomach with another knife, before calling an ambulance, claiming she attacked him.

Peter Stage, defending, alleges that Thompson was stabbed first by Ms de Raeve and had reacted in self-defence.

The case continues.