MAN BATTERED HIS GIRLFRIEND IN HER HOME
RENFREW man battered his girlfriend in her Linwood home - then told police it was because she'd been acting like a man.Daniel Garrett, of Bell Street, lashed out at his then partner in the living room of her Brediland Road home in January this year.
The 34-year-old spat in his then partner's face and slapped her.
The details of Garrett's attack emerged last week as he sat in the dock at Paisley Sheriff Court.
And he nodded his head as Fiscal Depute Iain Logan told the court Garrett said to officers investigating the assault: "I admit it - I hit her.
If you act like a man, I'll treat you like a man." Garrett was being sentenced after pleading guilty to two assault raps and a charge that he acted in a threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm.
Logan, prosecuting, told Sheriff Colin Pettigrew that the woman's daughter had witnessed the assault.
The teen phoned her 17-year-old boyfriend and asked him to come to the house because of the melee - and it was claimed he was assaulted shortly after arriving at the property.
The court heard Garrett left the living room and walked towards the front door, headbutting the young man once in the face as he passed him.
The police were called but by the time they arrived at the house Garrett was gone, and he was on the run until the following day when he was arrested.
When Garrett admitted his guilt his lawyers struck a deal with prosecutors which saw several deletions made to the charges he faced.
He was cleared of hitting his girlfriend so hard she fell to the floor, and a sustained assault on the 17-year-old boy was also wiped from the charge sheet.
Prosecutors had claimed Garrett headbutted him so hard he fell to the floor, tried to rain punches on his head and body, got him in a headlock and kneed and punched him repeatedly on the head and body.
But they cleared Garrett of those alleged actions in exchange for his guilty pleas.
Chris McKenna, defending, told the court that Garrett had been banned from seeing his child because of the case.
He said that Garrett had experienced a tough childhood, being brought up in a home where domestic abuse was the norm, and having to deal with his father being shot.
The lawyer added that Garrett later developed mental health issues and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and said his client faced a "constant battle." Sheriff Pettigrew ruled he could deal with Garrett without sending him to jail, imposing a Community Payback Order as a direct alternative to custody.
He will be supervised by social workers for the next year and was given nine months to carry out 900 hours' unpaid work.
