SPITTING THUG IS THROWN IN JAIL
Vile attacker who beat up three of his helpless partners finally sent to prison for reign of domestic abuse
A THUG who battered three women in a domestic abuse campaign spanning more than a decade has been jailed.
Thomas Park, who spat in the faces of two of his victims, was sentenced to a total of 21 months and three weeks in prison.
The father of two was originally charged with nine offences, including holding one of the women from a third-floor window.
At Livingston Sheriff Court, the joiner pled guilty to three less serious assault charges.
Park’s lawyer Kate Fabian claimed he had been brought up in a house where domestic abuse was part of life throughout his childhood.
She said he had been abusing alcohol and cocaine at the time of the assaults on three of his female partners and remembered little about what he had done.
Mrs Fabian said Park’s relationship with his first victim began at the age of 14 and they had a child together at 15.
After being remanded for his offences, Park realised he had to get his life in order.
She said he had now stopped taking drugs and cut down his alcohol consumption.
Park, from Armadale in West Lothian, admitted assaulting ex-partner Emma McLeary on two occasions prior to March 2008 by repeatedly seizing her by the neck, pinning her to a bed and screaming in her face. He also admitted butting Emma on the head and spitting in her face during the attacks at addresses in Bathgate.
He pled guilty to assaulting a second partner, Danielle Fairley, and repeatedly spitting in her face at other addresses in Bathgate between July 2010 and October 2014.
He also pled guilty to assaulting Sarah Chesterton by kicking her on the leg at a house in Bathgate in March 2015.
Passing sentence, Sheriff Martin Edington told Park: “These are dreadful, prolonged assaults against three different women you were in a relationship with.
“There is clear evidence of an entrenched pattern of behaviour involving violence towards partners.” A female sea eagle known as Shelly that was fitted with a satellite tag as a chick on the Isle of Mull but went off radar has been found raising chicks in Sutherland.