He said he fell on the blade, unable to betray his love

FOUR summers ago Peter McBride hugged his mother goodbye in the living room of their London home.

It was to be her final chance to beg him to leave his violent girlfriend.

Marian and her husband Sean were going home to Ireland, where they were preparing to retire — 25-year-old Peter laughed off his mother’s pleas.

“Sure look at the size of me, I can look after myself.”

But Marian’s son was the victim of serious domestic violence and was never able to protect himself. Soon after the McBride’s departure, Peter’s girlfriend Sonia Wallace ended their eight-year relationship by stabbing him to death with a four-and-a-half inch kitchen knife.

“She knew he would never retaliate, that he would never hit her. It came out in court that he never, ever physically or mentally assaulted her.

“She would goad him and try to put him beyond breaking point but he never once snapped. The trouble was Peter was madly in love with her and would do anything for her, at the end of the day love is blind,” said his father Sean.

Peter was a lively character with a large group of friends when he was growing up among other Irish families in Kilburn. In his late teens, he fell in love with Wallace who was two years older and the sister of his best mate.

Like most fathers, Sean never suspected his son could be the victim of domestic violence but now he looks back at the early indicators of an unhealthy level of control.

“Initially, I didn’t see anything at all, when he started going out with her he started to become very argumentative, moody and disassociated from his friends, they were just the early signs but I didn’t realise there was anything else going on.

“He was losing jobs because she would be ringing him all the time telling his boss she had to speak with him, saying he had to come home because she was sick.

“If he didn’t come home straight away or if he met his friends she would always use it to make him feel bad, like he was breaking his word.”

Apart from the emotional control, a number of times Wallace cut up Peter’s clothes and folded them neatly back into the drawer and he would have to call his parents for a loan of money to buy a new wardrobe.

Over time, it became obvious to everybody that Peter was subservient and he was getting little enjoyment out of life, except when he broke up with Wallace and returned to his family for brief spells.

Nobody realised the full extent of what was going on until he came home with scratches all over his face. These became permanent scars which he lied about, telling people he cut himself when he fell into a rose bush.

Another Christmas, he was struck by a frying pan in the face, but Peter could not be persuaded to leave.

“You can plead with him but you cannot alienate him, it was always important that he knew he had a home to come home to,” says Sean.

A London court would later hear of Wallace’s controlling instincts that at one stage had her ordering Peter to get a copy of his grandmother’s death certificate to prove he was attending her funeral in Ireland.

She would ring any strange number that appeared on his mobile phone, to find out who he had been in contact with.

Six days before his life-support machine was switched off, on July 18, 2002, neighbours heard her scream, “Who have you been calling?”

She then lunged at him with a kitchen knife. Struggling for breath he rang 999 but still could not betray his love and told emergency services he fell on the blade.

At her sentencing hearing, the court heard how she had lost control and could not account for her actions. Psychological experts said she had a fear of rejection.

It was of little comfort to the McBrides.

Mary T Cleary founder of Amen, Ireland’s only support agency for domestic violence against men, says that such cases are given very little credence by the authorities.

The fact that men could be physically abused by women jars with some people, yet according to National Crime Council statistics 88,000 Irish men have suffered serious levels of violence at the hands of a partner.

A GP study by Dr Susan M Smith released in September shows that in doctors surgeries around Dublin, the same proportion of men as women had suffered domestic abuse.

However, Sean McBride says the approach society takes to violent girlfriends stops men coming forward.

“There is an attitude with the police that they’ll just tell a man to go home and sort it out himself, as there is no way a man could be beaten by his girlfriend, but if he does go home and does something then he is in trouble.”

Following a trial at London’s Old Bailey Sonia Wallace was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. She spent 21 months in jail.

Recalling the day she last spoke to her son, Marian wishes the story had ended any other way.

“I gave him a great big hug and kissed him goodbye. I told him to be careful and that she would stick a knife in him, I don’t know why I said it, he just laughed.

“I wish to God I never said that, and think maybe if I didn’t say it, it might not have happened.”

The family left London and returned to Ireland, where they hope society will begin to understand that women are not alone in suffering at the hands of violent partners.