Jail for Oxford man who threatened to stab ex-wife

Darren Phipps, 42, slashed a ‘six to seven inch’ kitchen knife through the gap in the partly-opened door, nicking his ex-wife’s wrist as she tried to shut the door.

The woman took her two young children and barricaded them all in an upstairs bedroom, using furniture to block the bedroom door.

Jailing him for four years at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday (April 13), Recorder John Ryder KC told Phipps: “One needs no imagination at all to realise the terror that that must have occasioned in her and in your children.”

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The court heard that Phipps had initially left the scene in August 2021 after arguing with his ex-wife’s new partner.

He returned to the family home and shouted his threats to stab the woman. Again, he left the scene but returned later on with a knife.

In a victim impact statement, Phipps’ former partner said the older of her two children had suffered night terrors as a result of seeing his father armed with a knife.

During an overnight school trip, he was said to have woken up screaming that his father was trying to kill his mum and saying that he needed to go home.

The woman added of the impact on her: “I cry all the time when the children are not around and constantly feel stressed.”

While on bail for the August incident – and subject to a family court non-molestation order limiting contact with his wife – over a number of dates last July Phipps was seen outside the family home, at her new offices, and ‘staring’ at one of the children in an alleyway outside the house.

He was in a car that followed her as she drove down a dead-end road in Headington on July 22 last year.

When she stopped her vehicle, he was seen getting out of the passenger seat. After hearing her loudly call the police, he was seen to ‘smirk’ and laugh.

He again breached the non-molestation order by going to the family home last December. He was arrested, charged and has been remanded in custody ever since.

Phipps, of Barton Village Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty to making threats to kill, assault, possession of a blade and breaching a non-molestation order. He had 13 previous convictions.

In mitigation, Kellie Enever said her client had never intended to put his wife and children through the ordeal of giving evidence at trial.

He had been a class A drug user on-and-off since the age of 14, he had managed to remain abstinent in prison.

He was also an epileptic and claimed to have little memory of committing the offences that resulted in him being hauled before the courts.

Recorder Ryder recognised that it was ‘plain’ from character references and a letter from the defendant that Phipps had ‘many good qualities’.

But he raised concerns about the defendant’s ‘complete failure’ to come to terms with the breakdown of his marriage and his comments to the probation officer who wrote a pre-sentence report that it was he who was the ‘primary victim’ rather than his ex-wife.

The judge imposed a 10 year restraining order limiting the defendant's contact with his ex-wife or her new partner.

Darren Phipps' police mug shot (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Welcoming the jail sentence passed, Thames Valley Police investigator Rebecca Newman said: “The victim has suffered for two years by being made to feel unsafe in her own home and constantly concerned about her and her children’s safety.

“This sentence will allow them some freedom to feel safe in their community.

“Thames Valley Police takes violence against women and girls and domestic abuse extremely seriously and will always look to bring offenders to justice.”