A HUSBAND has to return to York Crown Court to be sentenced although a jury acquitted him of trying to stab his wife.

Raymond Wadsworth, 47, told the jurors that he had forced his way into the home he and his then wife Pamela had shared in Slessor Road, Acomb, on New Year's Eve.

But he denied her account that he had tried to stab her with a craft knife, and that he had hit her from behind on an earlier visit to the house that day.

The jury acquitted him of attempted wounding and assault.

Before the two-day trial began, Wadsworth, now living in Jersey, had admitted unlawful violence.

The jury heard the third offence occurred when he forced his way into the house and Mrs Wadsworth ran upstairs to phone police. When their eldest son, Jason, tried to stop him going after her, he produced a craft knife and threatened to slash his wrists unless their son let him pass. "You terrified your wife and children," Judge Jim Spencer QC told him after the verdicts.

He deferred sentence for six months, forbade him to contact his wife in any way and ordered him to stay out of trouble.

The court heard that Wadsworth was making a new life for himself in Jersey and that he had been suffering from depression during the final months of the marriage, which had now broken down.

Updated: 10:47 Friday, June 06, 2003