A WOMAN stabbed her father to death after being subjected to years of violent sexual abuse, a court heard.

Hazel Thomas knifed 50-year-old Stephen Akers after receiving another drunken beating on October 3 last year.

Maidstone Crown Court heard how the 23-year-old mother grabbed a knife and plunged it into his heart at the home they shared in Lorton Close, Gravesend. Thomas, now of St John’s Road, Whitstable, was freed on Monday and wept as she was given a three-year community rehabilitation order.

Jeremy Dein, defending, said: “We maintain Miss Thomas’s case has all the hallmarks of battered wife syndrome.

“She consistently suffered emotional, physical and ultimately sexual oppression at the hands of Mr Akers from a young age to the moment he died.” Laura Thomas, prosecuting, said the volatile marriage of Thomas’s mother to Mr Akers broke down in the early 1980s.

Thomas had a daughter with a boyfriend but the relationship broke down and Mr Akers moved in with her in 2000.

On the day of his death, Mr Akers had drunk about eight pints of beer and Thomas had been drinking vodka and smoking cannabis.

The court was told neighbours of the pair later heard screaming and furniture being thrown around. Thomas was heard to scream “my baby, my baby, somebody help me,” and “will someone get the bleeding police?” One neighbour saw Mr Akers push Thomas out the back door and kick and punch her when she fell.

When police arrived, Thomas had blood round her mouth and Mr Akers clutched a towel to his chest before collapsing.

Paramedics found a 10cm-deep wound below Mr Akers left nipple and attempted to resuscitate him.

Mr Akers was later pronounced dead at Darent Valley Hospital.

Thomas, who had aborted Mr Akers’ child shortly before his death, said her father rained punches and kicks on her as she crouched in a ball. She denied murder and her guilty plea to manslaughter was accepted.

Judge Andrew Patience accepted Thomas did not mean to kill her father.

He said: “He exploited you sexually and you felt obliged to acquiesce in embarrassment and fear.

“I have come to the conclusion that, notwithstanding the gravity of the offence of manslaughter, the public interest does not require that I send you to prison.”