Overview
- The 50-year-old pleaded guilty to a single coercive control charge covering January 2019 to September 2020 and was sentenced on Wednesday to 12 months in prison with a further six months suspended.
- Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford set a headline term of two-and-a-half years, reduced eight months for the guilty plea and four months for mitigation, producing an 18-month term of which the final six months were suspended.
- At sentencing the court heard a roughly 20-year pattern of abuse that included physical assaults, sexual coercion, verbal degradation and an incident in which the man struck his wife with a livestock whip while she held an infant.
- The suspended six months require the man to engage with the Probation Service, attend substance-misuse treatment and notify probation if he enters a new intimate relationship so the service can inform any new partner of his conviction.
- The indictment only covers January 2019 to September 2020 because coercive control became an offence then, and the case highlights how the new law is being applied and the long-term mental-health harm suffered by victims.