A JUDGE has dubbed a man’s controlling and abusive behaviour towards his ex-girlfriend as ‘monstrous’ as he is jailed for four-and-a-half-years.

Max Paintin, 26, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday (June 11) to one count of controlling and coercive behaviour, intentional strangulation, criminal damage, two counts of threatening to disclose private sexual images, and two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The offences happened between February last year and May this year.

The court heard Paintin had ‘obsessively controlled’ his former partner and had made threats of rape and violence when she did not do as he asked.

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Sentencing Paintin, Judge Maria Lamb said: “This was monstrous behaviour towards your partner. You threatened her extensively.

“You threatened not just her but her family, you damaged her relationship with her male friends, you accused her wrongly of infidelity, you decided how she could dress, you plagued her with messages and calls and this went on for a period of over a year.”

During the hearing, prosecuting barrister Peter Pride explained the pair had been together for a short while before Paintin had become controlling.

He wouldn’t allow her to wear anything that ‘showed her figure’ or what he would consider as ‘disrespectful’.

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Paintin made her delete male contacts from her phone and would ask for photographs when she was out to prove where she was.

After an argument, Paintin had thrown her phone from a taxi and struck her across the face, the court heard.

In a victim impact statement written by the victim, she said: “I was building my confidence but it’s not the lowest it has ever been.

“I feel angry a lot of the time. My outlook on my life now is really up and down. I found myself having suicidal thoughts throughout the relationship and this hasn’t gone away.

“My anxiety is through the roof.”

Defending Paintin, barrister George Josef said his client ‘doesn’t really have anybody else’ and his former partner was ‘all he had’.

He said: “He accepts he acted appalling. He finds it really difficult to listen to his behaviour. All he really wishes for is forgiveness.”

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Paintin, of Eastern Avenue, Oxford, was also sentenced for two counts of assaulting an emergency worker and assault by beating from an unrelated matter which took place in Oxford city centre on June 11 last year.

He punched a stranger causing him to lose consciousness before spitting on a police officer and biting another.

A total of 12 months of his sentence was formed from these counts.

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