An act of pure evil
Judge’s verdict as he jails acid attack woman for life
A JEALOUS woman has been jailed for life after her acid attack on a former lover left him with such terrible injuries he ended his life at a euthanasia clinic.
Berlinah Wallace, 49, had been found guilty of what the judge called ‘an act of pure evil’ after she threw sulphuric acid on Mark van Dongen, 29, as he slept.
At a sentencing hearing at Bristol Crown Court yesterday, Wallace was silent in the dock as she was given life with a minimum term of 12 years for throwing a corrosive liquid with intent. Speaking outside court, Mr van Dongen’s father Kees said: I am very pleased she is going to be locked up for at least 12 years, but really this is too little, as we as a family have been sentenced for life. I hope she never qualifies for parole and never comes out.’
In a harrowing three-week trial, jurors heard fashion student Wallace carried out the attack in their flat in Bristol in September 2015 after Mr van Dongen ended their five-year relationship and started seeing another woman. Using sulphuric acid she had bought on Amazon, she hurled it over Mr van Dongen in fit of rage, telling him: ‘If I can’t have you, no one can.’
The Dutch engineer’s injuries pushed him to the ‘limits of tolerable pain’, doctors said. Paralysed from the neck down, utterly unrecognisable and with acid ceaselessly burning his nerves, he told his father: ‘I can’t take it any more.’
He ended his life at a euthanasia clinic in his native Belgium in January last year. In a victim impact statement read in court, Mr van Dongen’s father, who had branded Wallace ‘the devil personified’, added: ‘I promised Mark I would be here in his name, that I would not miss one minute of the trial and I would make every effort to make sure that she gets the sentence she deserves.’
The conviction marks a legal first, as never before in England and Wales has a person who carried out an acid attack been handed a life sentence.
Mrs Justice Nicola Davies told Wallace: ‘Your intention was to burn, disfigure and disable Mark van Dongen so that he would not be attractive to any other woman. It was an act of pure evil.’
New legislation from July will mean anyone who wants to buy sulphuric acid will require a licence.
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