A violent offender has been jailed for a drunken attack on his one-time girlfriend after having an unduly lenient suspended sentence replaced with an immediate term of custody.

Kristopher Robert Goldie, 30, of Poortown, Peel, was sentenced in May this year to 17 months’ custody, suspended for two years, for assaulting the woman, occasioning her actual bodily harm.

He was also sentenced to two months in custody, suspended for two years, for criminal damage to his victim’s mobile phone.

But the Attorney General sought permission to appeal against the sentences imposed by Deemster Graeme Cook on the grounds it was unduly lenient.

Rachael Braidwood, representing the Attorney General’s chambers, called for the suspended sentences to be replaced with an immediate jail term.

The Appeal Court allowed the appeal, quashing the suspended sentences and sentencing the defendant to 23 months’ immediate custody for the assault and two months’ custody concurrent for the criminal damage.

It also activated suspended sentences passed in August 2019 for affray and road racing to run concurrently.

In their judgment, Judge of Appeal Jeremy Storey KC and Deemster Alastair Montgomerie said: ‘We have no hesitation in concluding that Deemster Cook’s suspended sentence undermines public confidence in the justice system and was outside the range of sentences available, in breach of a suspended sentence imposed less than a year before for a similar serious offence of domestic violence.

‘Only an immediate sentence of imprisonment was appropriate.’

The court heard the defendant had been in a relationship with the victim on and off for 15 years.

On July 25, 2020, the defendant was invited by the woman to her home but when he arrived in the early evening, he was very drunk, having been drinking all day at his sister’s house.

Goldie and the woman had been arguing by text all day and the row continued until she left to go out with friends. She returned to an empty house at about 1am and went to bed but some time after 6am she was woken up by the defendant who asked ‘who you with?’.

agitated

He was dishevelled, agitated and covered in mud.

Goldie went into the bathroom and turned on the shower over the bath and when his victim followed, he grabbed her and pushed her inside the bath.

She tried to ring 999 but the defendant snatched her mobile phone and threw it into the bath water, damaging it beyond repair.

The woman ran out of the bathroom into her bedroom and tried to barricade herself inside by moving her bedside table against the door but Goldie forced his way in and pinned her to the floor, repeatedly punching her and kicking her on both sides of her face, head and body and on both arms and legs.

She took refuge in her son’s empty bedroom but the defendant followed her, ripping off her top and bra and hitting seven or eight times on the legs with a bent metal shower pole.

His victim begged the defendant to stop.

At one point he bit her on the right side of her face and on her abdomen.

The assault lasted about 20 minutes and she feared the defendant might kill her. Police attended at 6.50am and arrested the defendant.

Although no bones were broken, Goldie’s victim was in pain and had difficulty sleeping for two to three weeks, suffered headaches for some time and was off work for a week.

Goldie pleaded guilty 17 months later. Goldie had not been employed for some time but was working on a voluntary basis at a fish yard.

The defendant said he was ‘terrified’ of returning to prison as he had spent four and a half months on remand.

His advocate Steve Wood conceded that his client’s sentence was certainly lenient – but not unduly so.

The Appeal Court recognised the defendant’s anxiety and depression were coupled with nearly 20 years of substance misuse but insisted his mental health issues were not a ‘trump’ card to avoid custody for an extremely serious assault.

sentence

They said: ‘Even if this was a borderline case for suspending the sentence (which it was most definitely not), the fact that the defendant had already received a suspended sentence for an offence of similar character only 11 months earlier should have caused the sentencing Deemster to row back from a second suspended sentence.

‘It is one thing to give a defendant a second chance, as the High Bailiff did, quite another to give him a third chance as Deemster Cook did.’