Violent attack after finding partner in bed with a man
AMAN launched into a furious and violent rage after finding another man in bed with his girlfriend.
Jonathan Doran battered both victims and left them with black eyes and cut heads after returning home earlier than planned.
The male victim’s injuries also included a bleed on the brain, while the woman was left with a two inch cut to her head and swollen lips and nose.
Doran, 35, had been due to travel abroad for a training course on August 17 last year but returned to their Birkdale home to collect his passport and found the pair in bed together.
The man, Thomas Bates, later told police nothing romantic had happened between him and Rachael Frost, though he could not remember why he had removed his shirt.
Prosecuting, Sarah Holt told Liverpool Crown Court: “Thomas Bates had been on a night out with one of his friends.
“A female he had never met (Ms Frost) approached him and his friend.
“She started talking to the pair, it seemed she was with another male who she didn’t know very well.”
The other man left and Ms Frost remained with Mr Bates and his friend until they agreed to take her home in their taxi.
When the taxi arrived outside her house, she became distressed in relation to her ex-partner so the two men took her inside.
Ms Holt explained that the friend went home and Mr Bates took Ms Frost upstairs and helped to make the bed “but insisted there was nothing going on romantically”.
He next recalled waking up to the sound of the emergency services and had no memory of the attack.
In that time, Doran, now of Canterbury Way, Netherton, had “pummelled” him in a fit of rage, also repeatedly striking Ms Frost though he initially claimed that she had only been injured by accident during the assault on Mr Bates.
Mr Bates described his injuries as including a small bleed on the brain, broken nose, swelling and cuts to his left ear and laceration to both lips. He spent two days in hospital recovering from the attack.
He left the house before officers entered the property and was found wandering topless in the nearby area looking for help and police were called by a neighbour who heard a man and woman arguing.
Although Ms Frost refused to co-operate with the police or CPS, evidence of her injuries was provided through statements from the police and images from their bodyworn cameras. They included a cut to her head, black eye and swollen nose and lip.
Her dad told police that Doran later made a series of abusive phone calls to him and Ms Frost’s mum, at first claiming their daughter had stolen his passport and run off with another man, and eventually saying he hoped she had “given them all herpes”.
Defending, Martine Snowden said that Doran was extremely remorseful for what happened and had lost his home, job and relationship as a result, while his father and brother had also stopped speaking to him.
She said: “He couldn’t have anticipated what he found when he got home and the red mist descended when he found another man half-naked in bed with his partner.”
Ms Snowden explained that Doran had spent time in a young offenders’ institute after an incident of affray at age 18 but had turned his life around to gain a skilled job in a position of responsibility and had avoided any violence since then, though he does have convictions for drugs offences and driving offences.
She said he had been working offshore for 10 weeks before the incident and the training course he was due to attend would have allowed him to advance further in a career which he has now lost.
Sentencing, Judge David Aubrey QC said: “You returned home and found your partner or expartner in a position you perceived to be a compromising position.
“Whether it was or it was not, you will be sentenced on the basis that when you went in you saw one of your victims halfnaked and drew certain conclusions and the red mist descended on you.”
There is no doubt that Ms Frost was struck on more than one occasion, Judge Aubrey continued.
Doran, who admitted the two charges against him at an earlier plea hearing, was handed a 30 month sentence.
An eight-week sentence suspended
for refusing to provide a specimen after drunkenly driving his dad’s car was also activated to be served at the same time.