A MAN tried to gouge his girlfriend’s eye out with a surgical knife while his pal held her down, Greenock Sheriff Court has been told.

Brave victim Jamie Lee Kerr said that Stephen Adams shouted that she was ‘getting slashed’ just moments after he’d repeatedly rained punches down on her.

Adams – who carried out the vicious multiple assaults in mum-of-two Miss Kerr’s own home – seethed at a jury who convicted him and branded the 
panel ‘rats’ as he was led away to begin an 18-month prison sentence.

Miss Kerr had earlier told the court: “He told his pal, ‘Hold her down, she’s getting slashed’.

“His mate held me down and Stephen tried to take my eye out with a scalpel.”

Miss Kerr said that 33-year-old Adams had initially walked over and punched her in her living room after she’d told his drinking and tablet-taking companion that he was no longer welcome in her house.

She told the court: “There was bleeding behind my eye socket and my eye was shut over. It was purple — black and blue.

“I was in the hospital for a couple of days.

“I had lumps and bumps all over my head – everywhere.”

Miss Kerr said that she turned her head to the side as Adams moved in on her with the scalpel, resulting in a ‘slash mark’ above one of her eyebrows.

She said that she managed to push the other man off her and run for her life following the attack at her Lansbury Street home on May 12 last year.

Miss Kerr told the court: “Stephen’s friend had taken that much valium he couldn’t stand anymore — he was like jelly.

“If I didn’t get out of the house I probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.

“I was terrified for my life.

“It took everything in me to get the guy off me.”

She added: “I have struggled with a lot of things over the last year – this has been hanging over me for that long.”

Under cross examination by defence lawyer Aidan Gallagher, the court heard that Miss Kerr had initially told police that she had fallen down a flight of stairs.

Asked why she did this, she replied: “Because I loved Stephen and I didn’t want him to go away.

“But what he did was wrong. If you love someone, you don’t do that to them.

“And I was scared as well. Scared more than anything.”

She said that seeing her two young sons and her other relatives in tears for her at Inverclyde Royal convinced her to tell officers what really happened.

On being quizzed further by Mr Gallagher on her differing accounts of events, Miss Kerr insisted: “Stephen knows fine well what he did to me.”

She said that the other man held her down while Adams punched her ‘a number of times’ before he went to fetch the scalpel.

Miss Kerr, who recalled how Adams and his friend had both been drinking and taking valium, said that the other man was initially welcome in her home, but after she had been drinking herself she began feeling animosity towards him over a past incident.

Adams was found guilty by a majority verdict of assaulting Miss Kerr while acting with another, repeatedly punching her on the head, holding her down and striking her with a scalpel or similar instrument, causing her fear, alarm and injury.

He had also been charged with throwing crockery at her, punching her, pursuing her into a bedroom, dragging her from a bed by her hair, pulling and pushing her, headbutting her, instructing her to remove items of clothing, punching her unconscious, preventing her from escaping and repeatedly uttering threats but this was removed from the indictment by the jury.

The panel also found Adams not guilty of a second alleged headbutt on Miss Kerr and stealing an Xbox games console from her home.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton sentenced Adams, of Clynder Road, Greenock, to 18 months imprisonment.

Solicitor Mr Gallagher told the Telegraph today that he intends to appeal his client’s conviction.