A man who blamed his stepfather for his miserable childhood has been jailed for 22 years after exacting bloody revenge.
Simon Dowrick, 25, broke into his stepfather’s bedroom and cut his throat while he slept, scooping up handfuls of his blood and telling him: “I have dreamt of doing this to you. It feels so nice. We are going to meet in Hell.”
The stepfather, William Dowrick, 67, survived the attack, despite being stabbed eight times with a pair of scissors and losing half the blood in his body.
Exeter Crown Court was told that Simon Dowrick had harboured a grudge against his stepfather for repeated punishments as a child while the family was living in South Africa. The court heard that this included being forced to work on the land from 4am to 8pm.
Jailing him after he admitted attempted murder, Judge Graham Cottle said that he accepted that William Dowrick had subjected his stepson to emotional and physical abuse throughout his childhood.
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Judge Cottle said: “I accept he was a man who had never shown you any love or affection. On the contrary, your childhood in South Africa, where you were living with him and your mother, was a childhood charactersied by physical and emotional abuse from him at a level that no child should ever have to undergo.”
The judge said that Dowrick, from Grays, Essex, had developed a “deep seated hatred of his stepfather” which led to the “premeditated, frenzied” attack.
Richard Crabb, for the prosecution, also accepted that Dowrick had a deprived childhood. He said: “The regime within the household in those days was undoubtedly strict by today’s standards. He suffered physical chastisement both at home and school.
“As his mother told police it is her view now ‘we have let him down, we did things at the time that I am very sad about’.”
George Papageorgis, for the defence, said that Mrs Dowrick told police she had never loved her son. She said: “I tried to love him. I wanted a baby but not this baby. He was unloved and unwanted.”
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Mr Papageorgis said that Dowrick suffered “punishment, punishment, punishment” that included being sent to a farm where he had to work from 4am to 8pm every day and he was beaten by his stepfather — punched, kicked, hit with a belt and told he was “no equal to his siblings”.
He said that the parents, both devout Christians, had taken religion “far too far”.
The jury was told that Dowrick had been drinking when he cut the telephone line and broke into the home in Torquay, Devon, shared by his mother Patricia and his stepfather in September.
Mrs Dowrick fled the bedroom to raise the alarm. Police said that the blood-soaked room looked like an abbatoir. When he was arrested Dowrick said: “I hope he dies.”
Mr Crabb said that William Dowrick would never fully recover from the attack. He said: “He is a shadow of the man he used to be, with substantial physical scars and psychological scars.” He said that Mr Dowrick cannot work, socialise, be left alone at home and suffers nightmares.
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Ms Dowrick wept in the public gallery when her son was sentenced. The judge told Dowrick that he would have sentenced him to 28 years had he not pleaded guilty.