Nathalie Williams cut a vulnerable figure as she testified to a court compiling evidence against her ex-partner Roddy Williams, who is accused of her attempted murder.

Williams, 46, was discovered in an underground cavern in the Rinella area last November, her husband Roddy having admitted to causing her disappearance, when the police had intervened in an argument between the accused and his wife's relatives in Triq is-Salvatur, Kalkara.

The woman had been missing for three days when she was found inside the cave, cold, dazed, and exposed to vermin inside the complex of underground rooms near the old Kalkara fortifications.

Consistent and lucid, but with voice quavering, the woman testified for around 5 hours via video link, depicting the man whom she had filed separation proceedings against as a manipulative bully who would take her money, beat and rape her at will.

She told magistrate Claire-Louise Stafrace that the incident in question had started on the 30th of October. "I was going to work and received a message in Maltese from my friend Audrey asking me to call on this number. When I called Roddy answered the phone. He asked why I made him a wanted man. He wanted to meet to speak with me. At the time I said no. But then in the afternoon I decided to call him to see what he wants. He'd been doing a lot, saying that if I didn't do what he said he would kill my father and my kids. I was scared for my family's safety." She had agreed to meet because she wanted the separation to end peacefully, she said.

"I was receiving a lot of threatening messages; 'you'll see what happens, what's in store for you', that I was seeing a lot of men. It was not true." She had filed a report at the police station after he threatened to kill her father and family, she said.

"We met in Xghajra as it was a place we used to love walking in. We agreed to talk there. At Xghajra we walked near the sea. We started talking normally and then it started getting unpleasant."

The pair had argued because Roddy insisted that the separation was coming from her father and relatives, she explained.

At a point the accused pushed her into the sea and then helped her up. "He called me a whore because he was convinced that I had other men. He also called me a snitch.

"First he lifted me out of the sea and then he started pushing me towards this cave. I had never been inside it. I didn't know about it.

"I went in on my feet but he was pushing me and saying 'don't piss me off.'"

"I was scared that he would hit me again. He had done it before and there are police reports to prove it."

Asked about the domestic abuse by Inspector Paula Ciantar, she said he would hit her and make her "feel that everything that was wrong with our lives was my fault."

"At first I could see and then he used a lighter to see where we were going." The pair walked through a narrow passageway into "what is like a hole, a small window. It was like a small hunters hide made of rubble."

"There was no light...not much air. I was scared that I was going to suffocate. I have asthma. I was panicked. I felt very cold. My clothes were wet."

Inside the hide Roddy had started hitting the wall and crying "I won't let them take my wife away, you are my wife."

Then he suggested they have sex, but the woman turned him down, saying it was "better not to." The accused replied that it was his right "because you're still my wife."

"I had to. If I continued to resist, he would beat me...I was alone in there, I couldn't call for help. One time when I told him not to smoke near me he picked up a piece of glass and threatened to slash my throat with it."

"He used to think, and he was right, that he could manipulate me, until I went to hospital." Nathalie Williams was treated for the psychological repercussions of the abuse, the court was told. "I was so miserable. I couldn't go on, working 12 hours and always no money...he would ask for €50 here €50 there, sometimes he'd take my bank card."

"I didn't want to have sex, not because I didn't love him, but because it wouldn't fix the situation. I loved him. I married him because I loved him."

He was always slightly violent, from the beginning, but I had forgiven him.

 "I was frightened at the time. Someone who loves you doesn't do certain things. He would say that he loved me more than my father and he had made me believe him. But when I left hospital, I realised that I couldn't carry on like this. I had always forgiven him...he would say that 'if you don't have me you will end up alone.'

 "It's true I had sex with him, but I couldn't say no. Where am I going to go in that little cave? Only I know how many times I got beaten up."

After raping her he took money from her purse and left, she said, returning after a while. "Inside the cave I just slept, I was very sleepy in there, constantly wanting to sleep."

 "He returned with a candle and tinfoil, put something on it and started smoking it. He said you'd better apologise or I'll slash your neck. He was really angry. I was terrified. After that he wanted to have sex again. I didn't resist. I let him do what he wanted. I resigned myself - I wasn't getting out of there.

What was I going to get if I resisted? Nothing. There are circumstances where you have no choices and can do nothing."

Every time he returned she would check him for blood as he would leave saying he was going to kill her family.

"'There will be the biggest funeral in Malta. I will kill your father and your kids. You will be the last to go,' he'd say."

Roddy never brought the woman any food or water, she said. "On his last visit, he said 'I will go get you something to eat.' Then I woke up in hospital."

There were four rapes in total, she said, the last one she couldn't remember in detail because she had fainted

"I was too weak to resist. I was constantly sleeping, I had no strength."

Roddy eventually brought her a change of clothes after she had spent several hours in damp clothing, she said.

"I had thrown him out of the house but he came back. I married a man to be only mine, not to share him with other women. People had told her that he was cheating... He accused me of depriving him of opportunities to have sex with other women."

Cross-examining the woman, lawyer Franco Debono asked whether she had tried to escape. "No I couldn't leave, it was pitch black. No lighter, mobile or candle - how could I leave?"

Debono suggested that she had said that she hadn't tried to leave because she was sleepy.

"At first I started feeling my way across the walls, but then I started to fear that it would collapse on me because it was like a rubble wall. I was soaking wet, shivering. Pitch black and terrified."

Was she scared or sleepy, asked the lawyer.

"I can't explain. I had no strength or control over myself. I was constantly sleepy"

The accused was unpredictable, she said. "Like flicking a switch, he sometimes is a gentleman and when he wants to be, he can be cruel."

She didn't have the strength to run away in waterlogged clothes and shoes in the cold, she said.

The sitting continued behind closed doors.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri and Yanika Vidal appeared for the accused, while lawyers Ludvic Caruana and Janice Borg appeared parte civile for the victim.

Inspectors Paula Ciantar and Josric Mifsud are prosecuting.