Former soldier jailed for campaign of abuse

Ex-serviceman convicted of nine charges involving attacks on women

A former squaddie was yesterday jailed for four years for a sustained campaign of violence against six women.

Richard Beech, 33, was convicted after trial of the physical abuse over a six-year period, but cleared of four rape charges.

Jailing Beech at the High Court in Glasgow, Judge Lady Scott told him: “You were convicted of nine charges of violence”.

“You subjected woman to regular violence – slapping her and pouring hot liquid over her and head-butting her, often accompanied by threats.

“You compressed the throats of three of your victims. One said this happened a number of times and she said she thought she was going to die.

“This was a sustained and serious course of conduct of significant violence.”

Lady Scott ordered Beech to be monitored in the community for two years after his release from jail.

She added: “I have no doubt you present a danger to any female you have a relationship with.”

Beech attacked one of his victims to the danger of her life by putting a pillow over her face and his hands round her throat at a house in Forfar.

The woman said: “I actually thought he was going to kill me.”

She told the court she eventually managed to push him off “with force”, but was “really petrified” following the attack by the former soldier.

Beech, who has previously been convicted of going AWOL from the army, was acquitted of four rape charges involving two women and a further allegation of indecent assault following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

But he was found guilty of nine charges against six women in a catalogue of violence between 2007 and 2013.

The offences were committed in Dundee and Forfar.

One woman, a 35-year-old mother of three, told the court she had gone to Beech’s home in Dunholm Road, Dundee, to finish a relationship with him in 2013 when she was pregnant.

She said they got into an argument in a bedroom and Beech locked the door.

She said he started shouting and took her phone and car keys and hid them and pushed her on to a bed. She said: “I was scared for my baby.”

Beech picked up a hammer and was going to hit her with it.

She added: “He told me he was going to kill me.”

Another woman, who had met Beech through a dating website, at first thought he seemed “like a nice guy” but later found he got really angry and told her he knew how to build bombs.

Defence QC Edward Targowski told the court that Beech continues to deny the offences.

I have no doubt you present a danger to any female you have a relationship with.

JUDGE LADY SCOTT