The estranged wife of a dad accused of drugging and then killing his four children to get back at her for leaving him has told a court how he used to batter her senseless.

David da Silva Lemos, 32, is said to have drugged, stabbed and smothered the youngsters named as 11-year-old Yasmin, eight-year-old Donavan, six-year-old Giovanna and three-year-old Kimberlly.

Prosecutors told Alvorada City Court in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, during a hearing on 13th May how he had brutally killed the children at his mother's home.

His wife Thays da Silva Antunes, 26, had already left him but in December 2022 had agreed to take their children for a visit supervised by their paternal grandmother.

But after she left, the court heard, Lemos, now facing four child murder charges, arrived and doped the youngsters with drugged tea.

Three-year-old Kimberlly was, said prosecutors, asphyxiated, while the other three were stabbed to death.

Thays had earlier obtained a restraining order against Lemos just three months before the killings.

Lemos was arrested on 14th December, 2022, at a hotel in Porto Alegre, after failing to return the children to their mother.

In a TV interview before the trial she said: "It hurts to lie in bed and not have them next to me. I haven't been able to sleep.

"I can't believe he did this to the kids. He could take my life, he could stick a knife in me, but not in the children, because the children were innocent."

She added: "I just want them back. I know that nothing I do will bring them back. But I just want my kids back, to be able to take them home. That's all I want.

"That monster has to pay for everything he did to my children. Pay for everything."

Thays told how she left Lemos after one horrifically brutal beating.

She said: "He was drunk, then we argued and he came at me. He hit me - in all, it was 20 punches to the head.

"He tried to pull me down, he grabbed me by the back of the head, but I didn't let him put me on the ground. If he had taken me to ground, he would have done worse."

Trial judge Marcos Henrique Reichelt has scheduled 11 witnesses in the case, expected to end on 15th May.