A manager at Wolverhampton College this afternoon told a jury how his lecturer lover repeatedly attacked him in the months before he allegedly stabbed her to death.

Stephen Dowds said Mandy Finn had even acquired the nickname “Slugger Mandy” after repeated violent outbursts.

Dowds, aged 49, listed several occasions when Miss Finn attacked him during their 18-month relationship, which ended when he allegedly stabbed her 60 times in the flat they shared on Newhampton Road West in November last year.

But the student services manager told the jury Miss Finn was “everything” to him and he wanted to help.

Dowds said psychology lecturer Miss Finn stabbed him in the hand and smashed a TV on the floor in one attack in March 2010, leaving him “terrified” and needing stitches.

On a coach in Venice, the 40-year-old grabbed Dowds and scratched his face before passing out, he said.

After another attack in a pub, Dowds had to lie about his injuries because of the “embarrassment and humiliation.”

Dowds said: “We were trying to work through things. I believed there was something wrong with her and we wanted to get to the bottom of it.”