Repeat offender is jailed after attacking girlfriend

Lighter sentence because victim kept going back to him

A 47-YEAR-OLD repeat offender who beat up his 22-year-old girlfriend was given a shorter sentence by a judge because the victim kept going back to him.

The judge warned David Martin to break off his relationship with the woman, and asked police to tell the woman to do the same in relation to him.

In December last year, Martin forced his way into the young woman’s home and knocked her down, sat astride her and punched her repeatedly after shouting through the door he would “crack her head off”.

Over the next few days, he sent her threatening WhatsApp messages and smashed up her front door while returning to her house to fetch his dog, which she had given a home to.

Martin already had 18 previous offences on his record, including using controlling and coercive behaviour against the same woman in 2018, for which he had been given a 15-month jail term. The offences included making threats to kill her.

He was back at Leicester

Crown Court having been convicted of assault by battery, using violence to secure entry to a premises and sending threatening messages.

Martin, of Peel Drive, Loughborough, had denied the offences but had been found guilty of them at a Leicester Magistrates’ Court hearing in April.

Ben Gow, prosecuting, told the court that Martin, who had got back together with the woman after being released from his prison sentence, went to her home on December 8 to retrieve some possessions after they had split up again.

He said: “The complainant didn’t want to see him and didn’t open the door. He shouted, ‘I’m going to crack your head off. I’m going to murder you’.

“It went quiet so she thought he had left, and she opened the door to put his possessions on the doorstep. He was waiting for her and grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the door.

“She fell onto the floor and banged her head on the stairs.

“He told her, ‘ Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? You’ve been having parties and men in the house’.”

At that point, Mr Gow said, Martin got on top of the woman and punched her several times in the face before leaving.

He sent threatening messages over the next few days, including one on December 16 in which he again threatened to “crack her head off”.

The court was told that a few days later, Martin went to the woman’s house for his dog.

Mr Gow said: “During the course of that visit he smashed the front door to get in and she phoned the police. When they arrived he had gone.”

Soon after that, she applied for a non-molestation order, which was granted in mid-January of this year.

However, despite that, Martin spent a night with the woman at a hotel in Derby in February, where he was arrested for breaching the order.

Mr Gow said: “It appeared there had been continued contact between the complainant and the defendant.

“In her victim impact statement she says she doesn’t know what she wants. He scares her and she feels that when she says things she doesn’t know how he will react. She doesn’t want a restraining order.”

Matthew Hardyman, representing Martin, told the court: “It’s no surprise there’s no application for a restraining order.

“[During the last prosecution] there were three retraction letters and the relationship resumed very quickly in September.

“They met in December 2017 and it was a very fiery, tempestuous relationship.

“There seems to be an almost fatal attraction that they fall into a relationship again.”

He said that since his client was locked up in March while awaiting trial for the latest offences, Martin had received six letters from the woman but he had not replied.

Judge Robert Brown gave Martin a nine-month prison sentence and said that he took into account the woman’s continued contact with Martin, which “undermined” the nonmolestation order she had applied for.

The judge said: “The reason it’s custody today is partly this defendant’s record, and also because this court has a duty to protect people when they sometimes don’t take the measures to protect themselves.”

He told Martin: “I have tempered this sentence because I do take into account the fact the complainant is making contact with you voluntarily and has been sometimes ambivalent in her attitude towards you.

“That being said, it’s disgraceful to assault someone in the way you assaulted her - you sat astride her and punched her repeatedly.”

He warned Martin: “You need to go your own way. You need to unshackle yourself from your relationship with this woman.”

Judge Brown then asked Mr Gow to have the police officers in the case speak directly to the woman to warn her to stay away from Martin.

He said: “She must not contact him and encourage him to break this non-molestation order because that is grossly unfair to him and undermines the order.”