Defendant Describes Abuse : Trial: Omaima Nelson, 24, charged with killing and dismembering her husband, alleges physical and sex attacks by victim as part of her defense.

As everyone in a crowded courtroom sat transfixed, Omaima Nelson sobbed Wednesday as she recalled repeated physical and sexual abuse by the man she is charged with killing and dismembering.

Nelson, 24, an Egyptian national charged with first-degree murder, told jurors that her husband, William E. Nelson, 56, of Costa Mesa, would turn violent if she refused his constant sexual advances during their brief marriage, and once punished her by killing her newfound kitten.

“ ‘I paid for you, I’m getting what I paid for,’ ” Omaima Nelson recalled her new husband screaming when she tried to spurn his desires for “kinky” sex. “He said he doesn’t care what I want anymore. . . . I told him he raped me.”

Nelson, who said she is a former model, shook and cried as she recalled that her husband once handcuffed and sodomized her, would often beat her and force her to perform oral sex.

William Nelson was stabbed to death in November, 1991, and then chopped to pieces. Body parts were stuffed in garbage bags, and his hands apparently had been fried, officials said. His lower body and torso were skinned.

Only two months earlier, Omaima Stainbrook had met William Nelson at a local bar. Within days, they were married, but it wasn’t until their honeymoon trip to visit his family in the Midwest that Nelson learned of her husband’s dark side, she said.

“I was looking for someone kind and nice who wouldn’t beat up on me . . . someone to give me the love I never found before,” Nelson explained.

Nelson said she stayed with her abusive husband because he always apologized for his actions, but once when she tried to leave him he beat her.

While driving back home to California, William Nelson demanded that his new wife perform oral sex in the car, she said. When she refused, he grabbed her new kitten and threw it out the car window, she recalled, sobbing.

He also threatened to leave her alone in the desert or report her to immigration officials as a Mexican prostitute if she did not meet his demands.

“It was sex all the time, three times a day,” she said.

Nelson said she once handcuffed her husband at his request after the two watched pornography films together and he took pictures of her in a bikini. He later forced her to perform a sex act, she said.

Neighbors in their Costa Mesa neighborhood recalled the sound of chopping and the constant whirl of the garbage disposal in the Nelson apartment on the night of the slaying.

But Deputy Public Defender Thomas G. Mooney is trying to persuade jurors in Orange County Superior Court that Nelson is a battered woman, a victim who struck back at her abuser who was attacking her sexually when he was killed.

Nelson is also being tried on unrelated charges that in November, 1990, she tied up Robert Hannson, a former roommate, and demanded money at gunpoint.