A “SERIAL woman abuser” breached a restraining order several times, culminating in a horrific attack which left his ex-partner fearing he was going to kill her.
Joshua Jones was made the subject of a restraining order in August 2022 after he was sentenced for sending threatening text messages to his ex-girlfriend, with whom he shared a daughter.
However, earlier this year the defendant’s family convinced the woman to allow him to see their daughter because he had changed, prosecutor Dean Pulling said.
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After an initial period “without problem”, Jones appeared unannounced at the victim’s home on March 7 and asked her to sleep with him. She declined and told him to stop taking drugs.
Jones “flipped” and threw a bottle of vodka at her, Mr Pulling said. This missed, but he then grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back inside the house.
Jones went “red in the face” as he strangled his ex-partner. When he eventually stopped, he said: “Look what you made me do”.
“I thought Josh was going to kill me,” the victim said, via a statement read to the court by the prosecutor.
“Whilst he was doing this, I thought I was going to die.”
The victim fled upstairs, but Jones followed her and pinned her face down on her bed.
After getting free, she hid in their daughter’s room. Jones punched a hole in the bedroom door trying to get inside, before going back in to the victim’s room and pouring foundation and disinfectant over her clothes.
The woman hid in her daughter’s room for over an hour until Jones left, Mr Pulling said.
A week later, Jones again showed up at her home unannounced. The woman told him to leave, but he waited outside until she had to leave the house and then pushed past her, searching every room to see if anyone else was there. He then followed her as she went to pick her daughter up from school, and then followed her back home.
On March 17, Jones sent the woman a series of disturbing texts and threatened to call social services and tell them she was “a crackhead” so her daughter would be taken away from her.
The woman caught Jones outside her home again on April 22, and he also requested to follow her on Instagram on May 16.
Jones, formerly of Ystradgynlais, was arrested on August 8, and pleaded guilty to six offences of breaching a restraining order, strangulation, and criminal damage.
Ian Ibrahim, in mitigation, said the best mitigation Jones had was his early guilty pleas.
He told the court that Jones had been using cocaine for around four years – at one stage using “up to £40 a day” – but was now clean.
“Alcohol also played its part. He had been drinking heavily at the time of these offences,” he said.
“He recognises the fear he’s caused. He said all he wants to do is be a better father to his daughter than his parents were to him.”
The court heard that 23-year-old Jones, of no fixed abode, had 10 previous convictions for 21 offences, and that these were all for domestic offences.
Sentencing Jones, Judge Geraint Walters said: “You are a serial woman abuser.
“You treated her like a ragdoll in her own home.
“What father who was brought up like you were would wish in any way to subject your own child to the sound of assaults and screaming and arguing within the house? Because that’s the child that people like me will see 10 to 15 years down the line.”
Jones was jailed for a total of 30 months, and his ex-partner was granted a 10-year restraining order against him.
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