A MUM has told how she was repeatedly abused and beaten during a stormy relationship with an Ayr man now accused of raping her and five other women.

The 32-year-old claimed Paul Hill, 54, dragged her out of a flat and down the street by the hair in Aberdeen after she told him she was pregnant.

She said: “He wanted me to have an abortion. I said no and I got beat up on the street. He punched me and kicked me, bent me over a fence and threatened to kick the baby out of me.

“He kicked me in the stomach. I was getting punched as well in the face and the stomach. I was roughly 12 weeks pregnant at the time.

“I had broken and fractured ribs, I had a broken jaw and I had a broken nose as a result of this incident. I ended up with pre-eclampsia – I don’t know if it was related or not. My daughter was premature, born eight weeks five days early.”

On other occasions, she said Hill tried to set her on fire by throwing burning cushions and left her with a permanent scar by repeatedly smashing her head into a glass mirror.

She told a jury at the High Court in Livingston: “He raped me on several occasions and choked me as well. I remember coming round with him choking me.”

On the night of the burning cushions incident, she said they had argued over leaving a party early.

She said: “I was tired, I was pregnant. I couldn’t drink and party with them. He got angry at me. He had this Zippo lighter. He took a cushion off the sofa then he started burning the cushion and threw it at my feet, then he took another one set light to it and threw that at my feet.

“He said I had three choices: He could leave me to burn in the flat, I could jump out the third floor window, or I could go back to the party. I went back to the party.”

When he grabbed her and rammed her head into the mirror until it was smashed in pieces she said he told her: “Look at what I have to look at” and called her “ugly”, “useless” and “worthless”. She said she got a scar above her right eye which was still visible 32 years after the attack.

The woman, who shared flats in Aberdeen and Dundee with the accused, said she was repeatedly raped by Hill as he compressed her throat and restricted her breathing in both cities.

Hill, of Kings Park Drive, Ayr, faces a total of 24 charges including seven counts of rape and five counts of assault to danger of life. The alleged offences date from January 1987 to October 2015.

In addition to allegations of a string of abductions, assaults and disturbances, the prosecution also accuses Hill of causing the death of a pet cat by unknown means, throwing a woman’s cat out of a window, drowning a parrot and threatening to injure a dog.

He denies all the allegations and the trial, before Lord Mulholland, continues.