A deaf couple's silent world erupted with a frenzied knife attack after the wife confessed that she was having an affair, a court was told yesterday.

Paul Merritt, 38, grabbed a six-inch kitchen knife and in sign language told his wife Patricia, 43, that he was going to kill her. He stabbed her nine times in the buttocks, back and arm until she signed to him that she was dying, said Amanda Perry, prosecuting, at Tees-side Crown Court

The couple had been married for eight years when the wife revealed that she was leaving him for a married man from their deaf club.

Merritt had a discussion with the man's wife in the club, at Sunderland, just hours before the stabbing. He arrived home in Seaham, County Durham, drunk and depressed, the court heard.

Miss Perry said: "He selected a six-inch kitchen knife from a stack of knives and there was an aggressive argument. He attacked her with the knife. He signed to her that she was a bad woman and that he wanted to kill her. She was desperate and she signed to her husband that she was dying, and she told him to go for help to a neighbour's house."

Merritt, who also stabbed himself, fainted when the neighbour arrived. He was arrested in hospital and told police he was considerably upset by his wife's affair.

She said that the marriage was over but she did not want him jailed, said Miss Perry.

Deborah Sherwin, defending, said: "He was a man who was out of his mind with distress and grief and he was not able to cope with matters."

Merritt of Milton Close, Seaham, was sentenced to 15 months jail, suspended for two years with a supervision order for the full period, after he pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding on November 26 last year.