A man beat a mum over the head with straighteners before trying to urinate on her in a vicious Christmas Day attack.
Stephen Smith also strangled his now ex-partner with a belt a few days earlier as part of a series of increasingly brutal assaults. The 32-year-old, from Stockbridge Village, sobbed yesterday as a judge at Liverpool Crown Court jailed him.
Graham Pickavance, prosecuting, detailed a series of attacks which Smith carried out on the woman, who the ECHO has chosen not to name. The first, on December 21 last year, saw Smith tie a belt around her neck and tighten it, causing the woman to struggle to breath. She said he was gripping the belt so tightly that she thought she may have briefly passed out.
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He then attacked her again on Christmas Eve, this time outside some shops, calling her a “f***ing b***h” and knocking a pushchair full of Christmas shopping so that the shopping spilled on to the floor. Smith subjected the woman to a final attack on Christmas Day, flying into a violent rage over an apparent disagreement.
Mr Pickavance said: “He hit her over the head with a pair of straighteners. He then dragged her down the stairs by her hair. “He then took off her boots and hit her with them.”
He said that after this Smith attempted to urinate on the woman before spitting at her. He was later arrested after police were called, though they had to force their way into the home because Smith had damaged the woman’s keys meaning that she was unable to open the door.
Mr Pickavance said that by the time officers got into the house Smith was “sitting comfortably on the sofa”. All three assaults were witnessed by some of the woman’s children and in a statement to the court she described worrying deeply about the long term impact that seeing the attacks would have on them.
She also said she was scared to leave the house and had struggled to cope in the aftermath of the assaults. Julian Nutter, defending, said Smith, who has no previous convictions for violence, felt deep shame over what he had done.
He referenced Smith’s own interviews with probation officers, during which he expressed what an officer described as “genuine remorse” and told them: “I’ve got to get help to make sure I don’t do anything like this again.”
Smith, appearing over video link from prison, cried throughout large parts of Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. The judge, Stuart Driver QC, said the severity of each of the assaults meant the Smith’s jail term would be pushed “right to the top” of the bracket that was recommended for assault cases.
Judge Driver said: “Each was a case of domestic violence. In each case you used an object as a weapon. In each case the violence was done in the presence of a child.”
He said the last assault in particular showed Smith’s yearning not only to injure the woman but to demean her as well. Judge Driver said: “As well as injury, there was insult. You tried to humiliate her by urinating on her.”
Smith, of Snowberry Road, was jailed for three years after admitting three counts of assault. Judge Driver also imposed an indefinite restraining order preventing him from contacting his ex partner.
