A thug who threatened to ‘shank’ his girlfriend after punching her repeatedly in the face has been jailed for more than two years.

Jacob Chambers, 32, already had convictions for abusing five partners when he subjected the woman to a drunken attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2021, at a flat they’d been lent in Banbury.

The brutal assault, which began after Chambers was challenged about messaging other women, was partly-captured on tape after his victim managed to press record on her pocketed mobile phone.

At one stage in the attack he pulled a knife from his waistband - referred to by Chambers on the tape as his ‘shank’ - but ended up injuring himself on the blade.

He could be heard threatening to kill her and said he would ‘f*** her up’.

She fled the flat followed by her boyfriend, who threatened to come to slash her tyres. When police arrived he ran away through gardens but was eventually caught by officers.

In a victim personal statement read to Oxford Crown Court from the witness stand, Chambers’ former partner accused him of having brought ‘darkness to my life’.

She said she had been fearful ‘24/7’. “My best friends noticed changes in my personality and told me it was like the life had been sucked out of me.”

 

Oxford Crown Court

Oxford Crown Court

 

The court heard that in June, just days after he was charged with the New Year’s Day assault, he bombarded his ex with calls via social media app Instagram in breach of an earlier non-molestation order banning him from contacting her. Later that day, she saw him waiting outside a convenience store in Bournemouth where she was shopping with a friend.

Chambers had more than 30 previous convictions, including for assaulting former partners, robbery and aggravated burglary.

Jailing him for 29 months on Thursday afternoon, Judge Maria Lamb said: “Use the time that you have that you say you will make use of and make sure you come out of this sentence of immediate custody in a better state of mind and resolved not ever to treat a domestic partner or indeed anybody else in the way you have hitherto behaved. I hope that is the case.”

Mitigating, Richard Davies said his client had offered a ‘genuine and sincere apology’ to the court and the defendant. “He realises this was a regrettable and shameful way to behave.”

He had cut back on his alcohol intake and drug use. Since his last prison release he had obtained work and accommodation in the West Midlands.

Chambers, of Anderson Road, Birmingham, pleaded guilty at previous hearings to causing his now former partner actual bodily harm and breaching a non-molestation order.

A restraining order bans Chambers from contacting his victim indefinitely.

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