FOUR months after being released from jail for trying to throttle his naked girlfriend, a Wirral man committed a copycat offence against his current partner, a court heard.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that Kevin Hayes changed after drinking a bottle of vodka and attacked Pauline Dillon throughout the night at her Birkenhead house.

The 32-year-old victim's ordeal came to an end in the morning as Hayes left after telling her to tell the police that her injuries were the result of a car crash.

Jailing Hayes for four years, Judge Denis Clark said: "Your victim in 1996 was a female partner and that was an offence of viciousness and terror. I remember well how she got out of a window and fell down in an attempt to escape you.

"Here we have a copycat offence. You seem to target women and have a deep-rooted problem. It is a power struggle, a power game. It must have been a period of concerted terror."

Before he was led to the cells Hayes, 31, of Rice Lane, Wallasey, who had pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding and making a threat to kill, thanked the judge for treating him 'very fairly'.

The court heard that Hayes was jailed for three-and-a-half years in 1997 for causing an 18-year-old partner grievous bodily harm. He had also been convicted of false imprisonment and threatening to kill the girl, who fell 20 feet from a window trying to get away from him.

On that occasion Judge Clark called Hayes 'a wife beater' and 'a nasty piece of work'.

Mr Trevor Parry-Jones, prosecuting, said that Hayes was released on licence from the sentence in May last year and resumed an earlier relationship with Miss Dillon, the mother of his three children, but they did not live together.

On September 11 he went to her house and they spent the evening watching TV with their nine-year-old son.

Around 2am Hayes began to drink heavily from a bottle of vodka. He became extremely abusive and wanted to drive home. She told him not to because he had been drinking and, without warning, he punched her extremely hard four or five times in the face.

Miss Dillon screamed, he put his hands around her throat and began to strangle her, he said. She thought she was going to die but Hayes stopped without warning and went to speak to her son.

She told him to leave but he followed her into her bedroom and punched her to the other side of the head, then smashed a glass and threatened to cut her.

The boy came in the room carrying a tipless 12-inch bladed knife which Hayes took from him, then started asking the boy to hit him.

Miss Dillon was hit again and she remembered standing on the landing with blood flowing from her face. Hayes again tried to strangle her and bit her forearm, leaving a scar, he said.

Hayes threatened to kill her and bury her in the garden and to bury her son 'on the moors', said Mr Parry-Jones.

Miss Dillon was treated at hospital for extensive bruising and swelling and three wounds to her forehead.

Mr Stuart Driver, defending, said that Hayes had apologised to Miss Dillon and was disgusted with himself. There had been no suggestion of any violence before the incident and things had been going fine. He had too much vodka and changed completely, he said.

Hayes did not want to be like that, did not know why he became like that and was ashamed, he added.

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