‘Ex-partner tried to gouge out my eyes’
SAMANTHA Jenkins spent an hour fighting to stay alive during an assault by her partner. During the attack Kevin Owen tried to gouge out her eyes with a broom handle and left her with horrific injuries.
Owen fell into a drunken rage one evening at their shared flat. He threw a television and glass ashtray at Samantha, tried to strangle her and used such force he snapped the broom handle in half during the sustained assault – which lasted for an hour and a half.
Her two front teeth were knocked out and she had to have stitches in her head after the beating in November 2014. Owen was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of wounding with intent at Cardiff Crown Court in July 2015 – but Samantha, from Caerphilly, is living in fear after being informed he is set for release as early as this May.
Mum-of-one Samantha is adamant he shouldn’t be allowed back to their shared town – particularly after he tried to shift the blame on her.
Now in another relationship, Samantha said: “I knew he wasn’t exactly ‘the one’ but I had no idea he would turn on me. I was fighting for my life when he attacked me – I could easily have died that night.”
“What he did has left me insecure and paranoid in my new relationship. I definitely have trust issues after what I’ve been through. Now he’s being released I’m even more terrified – it isn’t fair that he gets to come back to Caerphilly after what he did to me.”
Samantha started to see Owen’s true colours after they moved in together a few weeks into their relationship.
She said: “At first he seemed fine but he soon became jealous and controlling. He was always picking at me and he could be violent and aggressive –he’d hit me on previous occasions – but it got worse and worse the longer we were together, becoming a daily occurrence.
“On the night of the attack a friend was hanging out and drinking at the flat with us when Kevin started to get jealous and argumentative.”
Used to Kevin’s controlling behaviour, Samantha told the friend to leave and that she’d be fine, unaware of what was about to happen.
“I’d become quite numb to the abuse and didn’t expect anything truly bad to happen, but something changed in him that night. He wasn’t just shoving me around, he was giving it everything he had. He grabbed a mirror and hit me over the head with it, then he was on top of me and beating me with a broomstick. He was putting so much force into it that he literally snapped it in half – then he started trying to gouge out my eyes with the handle.”
Samantha said: “I spotted a piece of cracked mirror next to me on the floor and I hit him with it so he’d get off. I grabbed my phone and ran upstairs to call the police. He was still coming at me the whole time, but was bleeding heavily, so combined with how much alcohol he’d drank, he was a bit hazy.”
The police arrived and arrested Owen, while an ambulance came for Samantha. She spent two days in Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil.
Samantha decided to press charges and a court date was set. She had to relive the attack via video link.
She said: “He wrote to me to apologise and beg me to drop the charges, but I was determined to see the nutcase put away. He could have killed me, and probably would have if I hadn’t got to the phone in time.”
Incredibly, in court Owen claimed he had been acting in self-defence.
Samantha, a carer, was recently told her former partner was set for release in May 2019 and is now terrified he’ll move back to Caerphilly.
She said: “He shouldn’t be allowed back, it just isn’t fair. I still have scars from that night. I’m not allowed to forget, so why should he?”