Brute Robert Conlon repeatedly beat woman up then followed her from Ireland to England when she desperately tried to escape him
A man who persistently beat up his partner followed her across the Irish Sea when she moved to Northamptonshire in an attempt to get away from him.
Robert Conlon repeatedly inflicted beatings on the woman in front of their children and strangled her to the point where she began to hope that he would ‘finish her off’.
A court hearing heard that the victim had been left ‘broken’ by what happened to her.
Conlon, of no fixed abode, but previously of Irchester, was before His Honour Judge David Herbert KC on Friday (October 18) after admitting a string of charges against him.
Judge Herbert heard he had already been jailed once before for the serious abuse he inflicted on his previous partner.
On his release from prison he struck up another relationship and they quickly had two small children. After a short ‘honeymoon period’, the relationship deteriorated and he began inflicting regular beatings on her.
While living in Ireland the woman obtained a protection order against him and, in summer last year, fled to live with her father back in Irchester.
But Conlon followed her.
Prosecuting, Caroline Bray, told the court: “Sometimes, when he was strangling her, she wished he would just finish her off.
"He would spit into her face to humiliate her and call her degrading names.”
She spoke of one instance where the 33-year-old dragged his victim out of a car and ‘boxed’ her face, put his hands around her throat, called her a wh**e and gave her a black eye.
On another occasion in a car they began arguing so he smashed her head into a windscreen then told her she would have to pay for it to be fixed.
When she had filler put in her lips he accused her of having it done so she could commit sex acts on other men, then he punched her in the mouth.
He would assault her in front of their children and she became scared to take them to school in case they told someone what was happening.
When she finally managed to get away from him in January this year, he phoned her telling her that he was coming to her flat and ‘there would be murder’.
A victim impact statement was read to the court by Ms Bray which said: “She doesn’t understand why he did this to her when she loved him.
"He broke her.
"She felt scared and didn’t know how to escape. The last time he assaulted her she thought he was going to kill her.”
In mitigation, the court heard how Conlon had undertaken several courses while on remand and that he was determined to have a relationship with his children on his release, despite the ‘uphill battle’ he faces in order to do so.
Conlon pleaded guilty to coercive control, intentional strangulation and malicious communication. Several other counts were allowed to lie on file.
He was given three years and seven months in prison. An indefinite restraining order was imposed banning him from contacting his victim.
Back in 2017 Conlon became the first person in Sussex to be jailed for coercive control. He was imprisoned for four-and-a-half years. Despite concerted efforts, police have been unable to locate his full antecedent history so it could not be read in court.