A MAN who threatened to kill his partner if she told the police about his violent and controlling behaviour has been jailed for two years.

Adrian Morley, 36, was labelled a “coward and a bully” after Bradford Crown Court heard he had attacked Clare Banks on more than one occasion during their relationship from May 2015 to February this year.

He had pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and an offence of controlling or coercive behaviour prior to yesterday’s hearing.

Prosecutor Heather Gilmore said the first attack occurred in May 2015, when Morley banged a then pregnant Miss Banks’ head against a wall and stood on her throat.

Although she sought medical attention, she didn’t tell doctors how she had sustained the injuries and didn’t report the matter to police.

At the end of January this year, the pair went to visit friends in Blackpool and Miss Gilmore said Morley became enraged after Miss Banks gave a man a cigarette and used the phrase “there you go love.”

He pushed her to the ground and later kicked her out of their bedroom, forcing her to sleep on the landing.

Miss Gilmore said that over the next few days, Morley repeatedly threatened further violence against Miss Banks, at one point breaking in to her house through a kitchen window and saying he would “put pills down her throat.”

In a confrontation at his father’s house, Morley punched her and was said to say: “If you don’t shut up you’re going to die”, adding that he would let her go if she agreed to “sit in the corner and let him kick her on the hour every hour.”

Despite his threats against her going to the police, Morley was eventually arrested on February 3 from his home on Milner Ing, Wyke, Bradford.

The court heard that he had been “disgusted” with himself and “ashamed” of his behaviour, stating that his issues with alcohol had been a factor.

Miss Gilmore said Morley had been released from a seven-year prison sentence in December 2013 after convictions for false imprisonment and causing grievous bodily harm against a former partner.

In that attack, he had jumped up and down on the woman’s body and punctured both her lungs before refusing to let her leave and seek medical treatment.

Judge Jonathan Rose told Morley: “You subjected this woman to repeated incidents of violence and you sought to control her.

“You allowed the dangerous man that is within you to control you.

“You are a coward and a bully.

“No man has the right to attempt to control, or still less, to use violence against a woman.

“I wonder quite how remorseful you are about what you have done.”