- Penny Howard was betrayed by the father of her children.
- Jumping in the front seat of her car, Paul John Smith attacked Penny with a knife.
- Fighting for her life, today Penny is still recovering from the ordeal.
Here Penny tells her story in her own words.
*Names have been changed to protect anonymity
Stuffing my bag full of clothes, I pulled it closed and headed out the front door.
I’m never coming back here again, I thought, angrily.
It was the day before my 16th birthday and I’d just had a terrible row with my parents.
Confiding in my boyfriend, Paul, then 25, he invited me to live with him.
He was like my knight in shining armour -– my safe place when I had nowhere else to go.
‘I’ll always take care of you.’
We’d met six months earlier through friends.
Nearly 10 years my senior, Paul was charming and confident, completely unlike boys my age.
But fearing our families would judge our age gap, we kept our romance secret.
I was in Year 11 and Paul would drive me to and from school each day, and he took care of the bills so I could focus on my studies.
As we chatted about our days over dinner, it felt like a real grown-up relationship.
‘I’ll always take care of you,’ he promised.
In July 1995, I completed school and fell pregnant with our first child, Millie*, who was born in April 1996 when I was 17.
Our son Charlie* followed 18 months later in October 1997.
For the most part, we were really happy.
In time though, Paul grew increasingly demanding and controlling.
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If the house wasn’t spotless when he came home, he’d order me to clean, calling our home a ‘pig sty’.
He also prevented me from seeing friends, breaking apart the small circle I’d built.
Not being in contact with my family either meant I struggled with isolation.
Paul and the kids were all that I had.
Still, it seemed nothing made him happy.
If I turned down his advances due to the exhaustion of being a young mum, he’d call me worthless.
‘You look like a witch.’
He even picked on the way I dressed and wore my hair.
‘You look like a witch,’ he’d say if I dared to wear my long brown locks down.
By 29, I felt completely defeated. I was desperate to leave but, without a support network, I had no-one to turn to.
So after more than 20 years together, in February 2016, we tied the knot in a small ceremony.
Afterwards, I took on more shifts at the supermarket where I worked on the checkout.
But things only got worse. In December 2017, Paul got physical with me one night after work.
By then, Millie, 21, had a bub of her own and had moved out. But Charlie, 20, saw it all.
Calling police, I took out a restraining order.
Paul was removed from the house and barred from coming there or to my workplace, or contacting me.
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It didn’t dissuade him.
Six weeks later in January 2018, Paul started harassing me to sell the house.
Desperate to keep my home, I told him I’d get a loan from the bank to pay him off.
But when I visited the local branch, around 2pm one day, they knocked me back because my supermarket wage wasn’t enough to sustain the mortgage on my own.
Walking back to my car parked a few metres down the road, a sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach when I saw Paul was waiting for me.
Before I had a chance to make a getaway, he jumped in the passenger seat next to me and locked the doors.
‘I’ve lost everything – you, the house, the kids,’ he rambled.
I tried to remain calm as I drove towards Paul’s parents’ house, two minutes away.
‘I don’t care. I’m going to kill you.’
But as we pulled up outside, I froze in horror when Paul revealed a 12cm long kitchen knife he’d been hiding in his jumper sleeve.
‘Think about what you’re doing,’ I begged.
‘I don’t care. I’m going to kill you,’ he shouted at me, his eyes dark and full of rage.
Restrained by my seatbelt, I couldn’t move as he launched towards me, slashing the knife across my cheeks.
Then, grabbing my hair, he pulled my head back to reveal my neck.
If he slits my throat it’s game over, I panicked.
In a desperate attempt to stop him, I grabbed the blade of the knife, and it sliced through the webbing of my fingers as I tried to wrestle it from his grasp.
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Winning the knife back off me, he stabbed me repeatedly in the hands and arms and twice more in my liver.
Fighting for my life, I kicked and punched with everything I had.
Then, as I pressed the car horn to alert a passer-by, Paul plunged the steel blade into the left side of my chest, all the way to the handle.
‘I’ve done it now. I’ve killed you,’ he laughed maniacally.
Thinking of Millie and Charlie and my then 10-month-old grandchild, I knew I had to fight.
They need me, I realised, as I battled to stay conscious.
Adrenaline kicking in, I mustered whatever strength I had left, twisted in my seat and kicked Paul straight in the chest.
The force catapulted him, and the knife he was still gripping onto, against the window, and a crimson spray spurted across the roof as blood gushed from my chest.
Unbuckling my seatbelt and opening the door, I threw myself out of the car to escape.
But Paul was two steps ahead and kicked me to the ground.
Standing in the middle of the road, my hands in the air, I thought Paul was going to finish me off, but instead he fled in my car.
Once he was gone, I stumbled my way across the road to where an elderly lady was watching from her garden.
‘Help is on the way,’ she told me, trying to stem the blood flow as the world went black…
When I came to in hospital, Millie and Charlie were by my bedside.
‘We thought we’d lost you, Mum,’ they sobbed.
I listened in shock as they explained that moments after I passed out, an ambulance raced me to hospital, where doctors spent six hours in theatre working to close my 16 stab wounds.
‘It’s a miracle you survived,’ the doctor confirmed, explaining Paul missed my heart by a single millimetre.
I couldn’t believe how close to death I’d come.
Police also dropped by to tell me they’d arrested Paul at a petrol station out of town, just a few hours after the attack.
Three days later, I returned home where the kids rallied around me.
That August, Paul John Smith, then 48, pleaded guilty to attempted murder, possessing an offensive weapon in a public place, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and breaching a restraining order.
Appearing at Stafford Crown Court, UK, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison and four years on supervision upon his release.
Judge Michael Chambers described the attack as ‘brutal’ adding that my wicked ex ‘intended to kill’ me.
Now seven years on, I still struggle with PTSD, nerve pain, and asthma as a result of my chest injury, but I know how lucky I am to be alive.
As word spread around town of my attack, I reconnected with my three older brothers who feared they had lost me forever, and it has since brought us closer together.
My kids have since blessed me with three more grandchildren, and I’ve also found love again with a new man, Barry*.
He’s the best bloke you could ask for.
I fought like hell to survive for my family. They’re my reason for living.
If you’ve been affected by this story call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 (Aus) or 0800REFUGE on 0800 733 843 (NZ).
