A TROUBLED widow who set fire to her home to lure her ex, then trapped him inside and stabbed him, has been jailed indefinitely.

Deborah Barry, 40, hatched a plan thinking her friend was conspiring against her, and started a fire in her house for the second time in a year.

Judge Peter Bowers yesterday passed an indefinite sentence of "imprisonment for public protection", similar to life, on her.

He said she posed a "significant risk of serious harm" until she addressed her mental issues heightened by alcohol.

She phoned Kenneth Winter, 63, saying "I’m going back to prison" with a smoke alarm blaring behind her at 3.17am.

Concerned for her safety, he went to Barry’s home on Sea View Terrace, Hartlepool, on October 8 last year.

He helped all he could - then found he was locked in, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Tom Mitchell said: "He feared that he was trapped. He eventually decided that the best way out was to get through a window.

"He was trying to escape when Deborah Barry come upon him with a knife and stabbed him in the left arm."

She tried to stab him in the stomach but Mr Winter managed to protect himself, took the knife and door keys from his assailant and got out.

Barry had deliberately set fire to the curtains. The flames were put out with towels.

Mr Winter said the attack had effects both physical - the loss of all feeling in the back of his hand - and psychological.

He said Barry showed "no temper" and almost smirked as he panicked and asked her for the keys to get out of her home.

"He took the view that what had happened was part of a plan that Deborah Barry had hatched because she feared that he was the head of some manner of conspiracy against her," added Mr Mitchell.

Judge Bowers agreed that Barry believed this in her fragile mental state when Mr Winter "in fact had probably been an emotional prop".

"I’m driven to the conclusion that the fire was bait which lured him to help you when he thought you were in an emotional crisis, and indeed you were," he added.

The court heard Mr Winter had known Barry for four years, they once had an "on and off" relationship and he wanted to help her.

Barry admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and arson being reckless about endangering life. She was jailed last year for reckless arson to the same home.

Paul Abrahams, defending, said the latest fire and assault was not a pre-set trap but a spur-of-the-moment panic.

He said she had kept out of trouble for years in the past: "This is the first time she ever physically harmed anybody."

Barry said she felt pressured and trapped by Mr Winter and social services and her life had "spiralled out of control".

She claimed she couldn’t remember the incident but also said she did it to go to prison.

She did not believe herself to be dangerous as she offended only in certain circumstances.

Mr Abrahams added: "She’s a very vulnerable person who needs support, that doesn’t necessarily accept that she needs support."

He said she accepted she was impulsive, had cut down her drinking and had a troubled life with the deaths of her husband and her brother.

Barry was assessed as posing a high risk of harm with "unstable personality disorder".

The judge told her: "If you had a definable mental illness I’d have made a hospital order. You haven’t a definable mental illness but you have got mental problems."

He added she suffered tragedy, depression and anxiety but had not taken help and support offered to her in the past and he couldn’t know how far she would do so now.

So he said the Parole Board would decide if and when she could be released after she serves a minimum term of two years and three months.