WESTCLIFF ABUSER BEN ROBERTS SENTENCED
Update 03/01/2026: Domestic abuser Ben Roberts, 49, from Southend, has been jailed for almost three years after breaching his restraining order within eight days.Convicted of stalking, assault, criminal damage and coercive or controlling behaviour, he was sentenced on November 5 to 24 months, suspended for 18 months, and slapped with a restraining order.
Roberts pleaded guilty to breach of the restraining order and suspended sentence, but claimed at sentencing he had done it accidentally.
Judge Collery activated the suspended two-year suspended sentence, then gave Roberts to another 325 days consecutive for the new offence.
The days he previously spent on remand and electronic tag will be subtracted.
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................
A DOMESTIC abuser who threatened to kill his partner and film himself killing her cat has walked free from Basildon Crown Court with a suspended sentence.
Ben Roberts, 49, of North Road in Westcliff, then stalked his ex-partner, showing up at her new home and workplace and bombarding her with phone calls and text messages.
Judge Samantha Cohen said the unemployed forklift driver had since shown little to no remorse and failed to learn his lesson.
But he breached his bail so persistently that he ended up remanded in custody – and as he had already served the equivalent of a 22-month prison sentence, his eventual sentence was suspended.
The court heard Roberts was in a relationship with his victim between October 2022 and November 2023.
“That period of relationship was marked by bullying and coercive behaviour by Mr Roberts,” said prosecutor Francis Lloyd.
Roberts called his partner “senile, stupid and crazy”, limited the time she could spend with friends and isolated her from her sister, telling her: “I’m your family now so you don’t need her.” On one occasion he hit her in the face, knocked off her glasses and told her: “I will get a knife out of the kitchen and kill you.” When she called a friend for help, he grabbed her phone and broke it.
After she left him, he would “phone her continuously” and show up at her workplace, even assaulting her in public.
She fears that “if he gets close enough to me, he will get his hands on me and seriously injure me or even kill me.
I believe he is capable of that.” She was now on antidepressants and struggling to sleep.
“My head is filled with reliving everything that Ben has done to me.
I find this incredibly traumatic,” she said.
Judge Cohen ordered the probation service to interview Roberts before sentence and described his performance in the interview as “not very impressive”.
“Over months, you visited violent, controlling, abusive and intimidating conduct,” she said.
“It was disgraceful behaviour.
You caused real fear and stress to her – somebody who you purported to love.
You seem to see yourself as some kind of victim in all of this.
You minimise the extent to which you are culpable and quite frankly, Mr Roberts, you express very little remorse about what you have done.
It is obvious that you seem to have learned very little, if anything, from this experience about how others are impacted by your behaviour.
You are a big man and when angry, you present a very frightening figure.
When someone says they don’t want to see you, or they don’t want to be with you, that is what they mean and you have to accept it.
You cannot force people to want to be in a relationship with you.”
