Paulette’s partner tried to kill her. Then he wrote to her from prison

Paulette Mountford worked as a volunteer with women who had suffered domestic violence for 3½ years before she was herself stabbed in the neck and stomach with a bowie hunting knife by her long-term partner.

The 60-year-old had been sitting outside her Gooseberry Hill home when partner Christopher John Sullivan, 74, became drunk and angry that she had unplugged the TV.

He fetched a large knife that he’d recently bought and then calmly walked out of the house and plunged it first into her neck and then twice into her stomach.

The entire time he was telling her: “Your kids don’t need you.”

When she tried to grab her phone to call for help, Sullivan took it from her and threw it away.

Clutching her neck, Mountford ran through the house and down the property’s driveway and called out: “Help, he’s trying to kill me”. Neighbours heard and came to her aid until paramedics arrived.

She was taken to Royal Perth Hospital and underwent multiple surgeries in an attempt to save her life. She was placed into an induced coma and kept in the intensive care ward for weeks after the attack.

“I died four times on the operating table in three days,” Mountford told this masthead.

While she was in a coma, Sullivan wrote to her, begging for forgiveness.

“Please Paulette, I need you now more than ever,” he wrote to her from prison.

“Paulette, please, I really do need you, I am scared because I don’t know what is going to happen.

“Please Paulette, come and visit me so we can talk things over.”

Paulette did not and has never replied.

She doesn’t believe Sullivan is at all remorseful for what he did to her.

While there was no physical violence in the relationship in the lead up to the June 2024 incident, Mountford said it was coercive and controlling.

In a statement to police, Mountford talks about the bowie knife Sullivan used to try and kill her.

“I’d never seen it before,” she wrote.

“I don’t know where he got it from. It had a sheath, but I didn’t see any packaging. Chris said something like, ‘look how sharp it is’ while cutting paper.

“He said, ‘this would really f--- someone up’. Chris was looking at me while he said that. He was smiling. The way he looked at me, I felt like he was saying with his eyes, ‘This is for you, bitch’.”

Sullivan was a retired fly-in, fly-out worker who had a wife and children in Queensland.

He and Mountford moved in together 14 years ago, but Paulette said his excessive drinking would cause them to argue.

After he retired, Sullivan began drinking more and more, and Mountford grew concerned about his behaviour.

On reflection, she wished she had acted on those concerns.

“For about two years I was getting more and more worried about what he might do,” she said.

“No one else could see it. Friends would come over, and he would be really nice to their face and then when they would leave he would have a go at me about them, tell me they can’t rock up without calling first and said they’re not to ever come back.

“As soon as they left I would cop it.

“No one thought he was capable of such a horrendous act.”

Sullivan was sentenced to 10 years for attempted murder in the WA Supreme Court of in September.

The outcome angered Mountford, who realised that, with time served and the potential for parole, he could be walking the streets in a few years while she was left with the horrendous effects of his actions.

Those include relentless rounds of therapy and medical appointments, a stutter so bad it has significantly knocked her confidence, chronic scarring, as well as PTSD, anxiety and ongoing nightmares of being attacked.

“What man in his right mind would stab someone three times and tell me my daughters don’t need me?” Mountford wrote in her victim impact statement that was read out in court during Sullivan’s sentencing.

“I don’t know how I got out the front to be able to yell, ‘He is trying to kill me’.”

While she was in a coma, Mountford missed her daughter’s wedding.

“He has taken away my life as I knew it,” Mountford said.

“Will I ever recover from what the bastard has done to me? It will take years for me to recover, if it ever happens at all. ”

Since she left hospital, Mountford has been campaigning to help other domestic violence victims spot the signs of a potentially dangerous situation.

While she now struggles with the volunteer work she once took part in, she still wants to be a safe haven for women like herself who may be scared and financially trapped in an unsafe relationship.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.