The partner of Mr Ian Bailey said assaults she received from him were "moments of alcoholic madness" followed by "total remorse", a court heard today.
Ms Jules Thomas was giving evidence for the first time on the fifth day of a libel trial at Cork Circuit Cork where Mr Bailey is suing seven newspapers for articles linking him to the murder of Ms Sophie Toscan du Plantier in December 1996.
Ms Thomas, a Welsh-born artist and mother-of-three, described injuries she received from Mr Bailey in 1993 as a tussle and said the extent of her injuries had been exaggerated.
"We were staying in a small bed, we drank too much, a fight ensued and we got into bed. It was over in a minute. It was a moment of alcoholic madness," Ms Thomas said, questioned by Mr Bailey's counsel, Mr James Duggan.
While she required hospital treatment, she said she did not need stitches and Mr Bailey had later expressed "total remorse" about the incident. They resumed cohabiting several weeks later.
In another assault in May 1996, she blamed the "demon drink" and said the fight was over in minutes. "It always seems to be around two minutes, and that's it. It's not something that goes on, it's like a temper flash," she said.
The court heard earlier this week that after the 1996 assault, her lip was severed from her gum, her eye was bruised and the "size of a grapefruit" and that she had clumps of hair missing from her head.
However, Ms Thomas today said descriptions of the damage had been exaggerated.
"My eye was not the size of a grapefruit ... I'm not sure why everything has to be out of proportion," Ms Thomas said, who has been in a relationship with Mr Bailey for 14 years.
Ms Thomas said she had met Mr Bailey in west Cork when he worked at a fish factory and that he later moved into a studio on the grounds of her house near Schull.
She said a relationship followed some months later and that he had always been extremely helpful to her daughters in areas such as homework.
Ms Thomas's daughter, Saffron (29), also the court today that her mother and Mr Bailey had "cried for about two years" after the allegations of murder first arose.
She said their lives had been altered forever as a result of the allegations and that many locals had ceased speaking to the couple over the last seven years.