A single mother yesterday admitted falsely declaring that the father of her child was “unknown” because he had failed to make his payments towards the welfare of their one-and-half year old boy.

Grace Calleja yesterday took the witness stand against her former partner, construction worker Sean Grima, 23, of Kalkara, who is accused of threatening to stab and shoot her to death. He denies the charges.

Ms Calleja said she had put down “father unknown” on the birth certificate because he had not paid his way in looking after their son Dejian.

On Saturday he had turned up at her house and banged on the door, she told the court. When she peered out through a broken window, the result of a previous incident, she could see that Mr Grima was drunk.

He could not accept the fact that she no longer wanted to be with him and he pleaded with her to go for a coffee with him. They did but after they had finished he did not want her to leave. Scared, she left the coffee shop with Mr Grima in tow.

He wouldn’t let her go back into the house and manhandled her, she claimed. It caused such a scene that the neighbours came out to see what all the commotion was about.

She said she had had to put up with his behaviour for a long time. “I was afraid I was going to end up like one of those murdered woman one sees on the news,” she said.

Ms Calleja’s social worker, Stefania Caruana, testified that she had been dealing with Ms Calleja for about a year and she had told her about alleged attacks by Mr Grima.

Magistrate Marseann Farrugia granted the accused bail against a deposit of €1,000 and his mother stood as his guarantor for a further €3,000.