Berlinah Wallace jailed for 12 years for 'evil' attack on ex-boyfriend that led him to kill himself

A woman has been jailed for life over an “evil” acid attack on her ex-boyfriend that led him to kill himself with the aid of doctors.

Berlinah Wallace, a 48-year-old fashion student, was sent to prison with a minimum of 12 years at Bristol Crown Court on Wednesday.

Mr Justice Nicola Davies, who sentenced the South African, said: "Your intention was to burn, disfigure and disable Mark van Dongen so that he would not be attractive to any other woman.

"It was an act of pure evil."

Ms Wallace was acquitted of murder but convicted of throwing a corrosive substance with intent following a four-week trial.

She purchased a bottle of 98% concentration sulphuric acid and viewed 82 websites about it – including post-mortem images – before pouring it over Mark van Dongen’s face because he left her for another woman.

After the 29-year-old engineer told her the relationship was over, she threw the liquid on him while he slept in bed at her flat in Westbury Park, Bristol, in September 2015.

She laughed while committing the criminal act and told him: “If I can’t have you, no one else can.”

Mr van Dongen was left in a coma for four months and suffered extensive burns to his body.

He was left blind in one eye, paralysed from the neck down and had to have his lower left leg amputated.

He died by euthanasia at a hospital in Belgium on January 2 2017.