Cheat husband attacked lover

Thomas Valentine, 28, broke into his girlfriend’s flat wearing a balaclava and carrying a blade.

He threatened to kill his victim within a day, unless she apologised.

Hours before he had warned the woman to “watch her back” as she walked to local shops in Blackpool with her sister and her young daughter.

Later that night, as her daughter slept upstairs in bed, the woman heard a knock at her door and was ambushed by a masked man.

She recognised it was Valentine by his voice and eyes as he shoved her against a kitchen worktop.

She had been in a brief relationship with him two months earlier.

Yesterday a judge at Preston Crown Court jailed Valentine, of Kentmere Drive, Mereside, for two years after pleading guilty to common assault and possession of a bladed article.

The court heard the married father-of-one had told the woman he planned to leave his wife during their relationship between August and November last year.

But when he tried to repair his marriage and learned his lover had spoken to his wife about their affair, he became angry and threatened her.

On the morning of January 4, he approached her outside the Post Office on Langdale Road, shouting: “What do you think you are doing, opening your mouth? You can’t keep it shut, can you?

“Watch your back. At the end of the night it goes dark. Watch your back.” At 11pm the woman answered a knock at her door and was grabbed around her throat by Valentine.

He pushed her inside and held the knife to her throat, saying: “You have a day to say you’re sorry or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

The terrified woman shouted for him to get out of her flat. She suffered bruising to her hip from being pushed against the kitchen counter.

In a victim personal statement, she said: “I am feeling stressed and I don’t like going out on my own. When I walk through the front door I always think about what happened.

“I don’t like leaving the house in case I bump into him or his family.

“I don’t want him to see me when I am out shopping and for him to cause me more problems. I want him to leave me alone.” Immediately after the attack the woman phoned police who searched Valentine’s house.

They found a balaclava on a windowsill and a knife hidden in a wardrobe.

In addition to his two-year jail sentence, Valentine was given an order banning him from making contact with his victim for the next 10 years.