HUSBAND HANDED LIFETIME RESTRAINING ORDER AFTER BRUTAL ASSAULT AND COERCION
A bullying husband tried to push his wife down the stairs before getting her on the sofa where he repeatedly slapped and punched her to the face.Nottingham Crown Court heard how thuggish David Hewitt then met with the victim at Nottingham's Victoria Centre and tried to force her to retract the statement she had made to the police.
The 67-year-old's victim told how his “paranoid” behaviour has left her "permanently anxious and nervous” and that she “does not want him back in her life” after almost four decades together.
Now he has been handed a lifetime restraining order not to contact her or go to any address where he believes she might be.
Handing him a suspended sentence, Judge James Sampson said: “What you did to (the victim) was disgraceful and has caused her extreme distress and anxiety.
You have effectively turned her into a nervous wreck.
“I won’t waste any more words on you, you are a nasty bully.” Eunice Gedzah, prosecuting, said the defendant and his wife married in 1986 and have children together.
She said there had been “a number of incidents” between them and on January 9, this year, they began arguing at their home.
The prosecutor said: “While she was on the stairs, he pushed her with both hands, trying to push her down the stairs but she was able to stop the fall.
There was further arguing between them where he was verbally abusive towards he and her family.
“She went into the living room, he followed her and pushed her onto the sofa, got on top of her and slapped her to the face four or five times with both hands.
He then punched her in the face four or five times, grabbed her by her clothing, pushed her out the patio door into the garden and locked her out.” Mrs Gedzah said she called the police who arrived and he was arrested.
She said: “On January 15, they met at the Victoria Centre and he spoke to her about retracting her police statement telling her to tell them she had exaggerated what she told them.
Following that she phoned the officer and told them she wanted to retract her statement.” Hewitt, of Castlegate, Newark, pleaded guilty to assault by beating and perverting the course of justice.
He has previous convictions but nothing since 2001.
Mrs Gedzah said: “In her victim impact statement, she described his paranoid behaviour and that he would lock her out of the house, was angry and explosive.
She says she feels permanently anxious, nervous and feels like she is treading on eggshells.” Lauren Fisher, mitigating, said her client is “fully accepting the relationship is over” and has spent time on remand for these offences.
The judge handed Hewitt a 20-month jail term, suspended for 21 months, with 25 rehabilitation sessions and a three-month curfew confining him to his address each evening between 7pm and 7am.
The restraining order is indefinite.
