July 2004 Sado-masochist is sent to prison SADO-MASOCHIST Steven Pickett was jailed for more than four years yesterday after a court heard that he used hypodermic needles to inject his girlfriend as a form of punishment. Medical and fetish gear recovered by police from his home in Freshbrook included a TENS machine, generally used for pain relief through electrical therapy but also capable of causing pain. There were also syringes, metal and leather gags, electrodes and even a laryngoscope, normally used by doctors to examine patients’ airways. Swindon Crown Court was told how Pickett, 31, dominated his partner and on one occasion injected her six times in her lips. His punishments also included making her take baths while he watched and compelling her to smoke cigarettes through her nose. Pickett admitted two counts of common assault and one charge of assault causing actual bodily harm on Miss Robinson, as well as 15 counts of downloading abusive images of children. Prosecutor George Threlfall said that the case was about fetishes, and Pickett had dominated his partner, who has mild learning difficulties, during their three years together. Mr Threlfall added: “He devised a system of punishment for this young woman for real or imagined wrongs that she had done.” In November last year, after her mother visited them, Pickett launched an attack on his partner. He did not like her family and they were worried about her welfare, said Mr Threlfall. He demanded that she take a bath and as they were crossing the landing, threatened to throw her down the stairs as a punishment for being pregnant, and later hit her in the stomach with a telephone directory. She was also punished with injections in her lips. She called the authorities for help after persuading him to leave for work the next morning. Police searches of their home in Anstey Walk revealed fetish items. Two computers seized contained 3,282 indecent images of children, including sadism and serious sexual acts. Defence counsel Stephen Bevan said that the images of child pornography had all been downloaded and viewed towards the end of 2000, shortly after the defendant had been working in a bank and had suffered an armed robbery and a street robbery. He added: “Mr Pickett is a man who was bullied and dominated throughout his school life and did not, perhaps, acquire the hard shell which would assist him to deal with the vicissitudes of life.” He met Miss Robinson in an internet chatroom and they had a stormy relationship which was, according to her, punctuated by periods of his depression. He said that although certain sexual activities between them were consensual, Pickett recognised there were others where his girlfriend had submitted rather than consented. Pickett was jailed for a total of four years and three months. He was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register and Judge Thomas Longbotham made a sexual offences prevention order banning him from contacting his victim or any child of hers until a further order is made.