A woman who stabbed her long-term partner to death during a violent fight has been sentenced to home detention, after pleading guilty on a downgraded charge of manslaughter.

Donna Henry was initially charged with murder after the Upper Hutt killing, but the sentencing judge said Henry meant to stab her partner, but not kill him, and that was why manslaughter was an available option.

Distraught family members of the victim, who the Herald will not name to comply with other suppression orders in the case, gave emotional victim impact statements in the High Court at Wellington this morning.

The 49-year-old man’s daughter battled tears throughout the reading of her statement, during which she told Henry she forgave her.

“Even in the midst of this overwhelming grief I want you to know that I forgive you Don, not for your sake but for mine. I forgive you because my dad would want me to choose love and compassion over vengeance,” she said, as another loved one wrapped his arms tightly around her in the courtroom.

The woman described her father, saying she struggled to imagine her future without him.

“My dad was more than just my dad. He was my role model, my hero, my best friend and my rock. His consistent love, guidance and support shaped me into who I am today,” she said.

“I would always be the happy, social, outgoing butterfly and sadly, my dad took my wings with him.

“My dad didn’t deserve to die this way.”

Justice David Boldt said Henry and the victim had been in a relationship for about 20 years, and while it was often described as great, at other times it was “violent and angry”.

Police recorded 51 family harm callouts to their property, 35 in which they considered Henry to be the victim. They considered in the rest of the callouts Henry and the victim were mutual aggressors.

The victim was reported as having a “controlling and possessive presence”, Judge Boldt said.

On September 22 last year, an argument began between the couple. Henry stood up and swore at the victim, who hit her in the face, knocking her down on to a table.

Judge Boldt said Henry then walked to the kitchen to find a knife. When she did not find any in the first spot she looked, she crossed the room to get one from the knife block.

She heard the victim approach behind her, swung around, and stabbed him once in the chest.

Henry called her sister to tell her what happened, then called 111. By the time police arrived, the victim was unconscious. Paramedics arrived two minutes, later but were unable to save him.

Judge Boldt said an aggravating factor in this case was the fact Henry escalated the situation by getting a knife.

“The fact you armed yourself, whether to protect yourself or otherwise, was not a spontaneous or spur-of-the-moment thing. Reaching for the knife was quite deliberate,” he said.

“Arming yourself escalated things to a new level with terrible consequences.”

Henry did not mean to kill the victim, and the burden of what she had done would last far longer than any sentence the court could impose, the judge said.

The victim’s father said in his victim impact statement Henry had taken “a son, a brother, a father and a grandfather”, and noted twin grandsons had also been born since the victim’s death.

“They’ll never, ever know him. He would have taught them to be self-sufficient, hunt, and survive in this world,” he said.

The victim’s mother said Henry would never know “how it feels to have your only son taken from you”.

She described getting “the worst phone call that one could ever get” from her grandson after the killing. She said he was crying too hard for her to understand what he was saying, until he spoke the words: “Nan, my dad is dead ... he was stabbed.”

The mother said the victim had five children and seven grandchildren.

“How could you do this to his family, especially his five children? I do not understand why you didn’t call the police like every other time. I would rather have seen [him] get charged rather than where he is today.”

The victim’s sister said she had told her brother to leave Henry and move on with his life, but he had refused.

“I just wish you loved him as much as he loved you,” she said.

“I never thought my brother would go this way, taken by the one person he loved the most.”

Judge Boldt said the interests of Henry’s children were highly influential in his decision on sentencing.

“We are already faced with one terrible tragedy, and my biggest challenge with sentencing Ms Henry is how to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in now,” he said.

The children would “suffer immensely” if separated from Henry, he said.

He allowed discounts to the sentence for Henry’s guilty plea, her remorse, background of trauma and addiction, and her motivation to change, as well as the time she spent on bail.

Judge Boldt sentenced Henry to 12 months’ home detention, with special conditions including not to associate with any of the victims, attend trauma counselling, and attend an assessment for a women’s motivation programme.