Hartlepool brute threatened to drown girlfriend in bath during seven years of terror

Early in their relationship she had told Michael Rochford, from Hartlepool, that she had mental problems and he preyed upon her vulnerability, a court heard.

He threatened to drown her in her bath and he told her when she was pregnant with their daughter ‘shut up or I’m going to take your face off you’.

He dragged her across a room with her hair in front of her younger sister as she screamed with pain begging him too stop.

She finally broke off from Rochford, 30, but he flung a fence post through her living room window as she held the baby on the sofa, Teesside Crown Court was told.

He continually turned up at her workplace, increasing her terror, said prosecutor James Yearsley, who revealed that Rochford had a conviction for strangling a previous girlfriend.

She said in a Victim Impact statement: “I’ve been a nervous wreck with constant recurring nightmares due to the abuse that I have suffered

“I still suffer from anxiety and PTSD daily due to the abuse I have suffered from Rochford and this will stay with me for the rest of my life. I am still anxious about what the future will hold.”

Michael Cahill, defending, said in mitigation that Rochford had been diagnosed with mental health problems, which was still no excuse for his behaviour.

He said that while in prison on remand he had achieved City and Guilds qualifications in food hygiene which would help him too find work on his release.

Judge Christopher Smith told Rochford: “This was a pattern of behaviour over a seven year period which has had a very high significant effect upon her.

”I am quite satisfied that she has been caused significant psychological harm.

He added: ”Your behaviour has slowly and irrevocably taken her to a place where she has had some significant harm caused to her .

”Your behaviour eventually crushed the victim.”

Rochford, of Topcliffe Street, Hartlepool, who appeared over a videolink from Durham Prison, was jailed for 45 months and given an indefinite restraining order banning him from contacting her after he pleaded guilty to putting a person in fear of violence by harassment and putting a person in fear of violence, alarm or distress by stalking.

He can apply for contact with this baby through solicitors.