A student who subjected his girlfriend to a terrifying campaign of coercive control and beatings has been spared jail.
Kai Wang, 21, kicked, punched and throttled his girlfriend even when she was pregnant, controlled her phone and isolated her from her friends and family.
Today, Brighton Crown Court heard she was left distressed and humiliated by his actions.
But bearing in mind his emotional immaturity and the effect of the nine weeks he has spent in prison while awaiting sentence, Judge Anne Arnold said she was “taking a risk” and sentenced him to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years.
Judge Arnold said: “Your actions were persistent over a relatively long period of time.
“Your conduct certainly in contacting the victim’s father, sending him photographs of a explicit nature and showing the pregnancy test result can only in my view have been designed to humiliate and degrade her further.
“You almost certainly used multiple methods of control here – controlling her phone, her friendship groups and indeed with a number of assaults.
“So far as the harm that the victim suffered, whilst there is no victim impact statement, the initial statement and the statements of the attending officers make plain the very obvious degree of upset and distress she suffered by virtue if the precipitating event which led to your arrest.
“In addition we have heard about the assaults on earlier occasions including kicking her to the stomach when you knew full well that she was pregnant.”
The court heard that Wang and the woman, who are both from China, met while they were studying in Sheffield in April last year and after a whirlwind romance moved in together after just one week.
It took just one more week for the abuse to start, when Wang assaulted her after he checked her phone and found she had been chatting to her ex-boyfriend.
He kicked her, and in doing so burnt her left forearm with her cigarette.
Prosecuting, Kerry Moore said; “That time was an accident but on further occasions he threatened her with lit cigarettes to scare her into doing what he wanted.”
That was the first incident in a string of assaults, including a kick to the stomach when she was pregnant.
During one attack, she feared for her life and shouted from a window, which led to the police attending.
But Wang fell to his knees and begged her for mercy, so she agreed to tell police it had been a verbal attack.
