Whitby man avoids prison term after vicious attack leaves wife with facial scar

Daniel McCarthy, 36, battered the woman inside her bedroom and poured water over her face, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Kelly Clarke said the couple, who married in September 2022, initially enjoyed a good relationship but it began to deteriorate, especially when they were drinking together.

“(McCarthy) became controlling by checking her mobile (phone) and her clothes for evidence that she had been cheating on him,” she added.

Although there was nothing to suggest that his wife had been unfaithful, McCarthy upped the ante by locking her inside their flat in Silver Street one day in May 2023.

As the relationship wore on, McCarthy became more controlling and had “driven a wedge between her and her family and driven away her close friends”.

He refused to pay towards the rent on her council flat which made her anxious about going into arrears.

On June 20 last year, the named victim, who has since left McCarthy, visited her cousin and called her husband when she returned home, only to be met with a torrent of verbal abuse.

“He said he did not believe she had been to her cousin’s house (and) said he had hold of her phone and was threatening to snap it,” added Ms Clarke.

McCarthy returned home later that night and pulled the victim out of her bed, poured water on her face and called her a deeply offensive name as he threatened her.

The following day, the victim was checking messages on her phone when McCarthy snatched it from her grasp.

When she asked him to hand it back he refused, telling her: “What have you got to hide?”

During a “tussle”, McCarthy “pushed her phone back towards her face” and punched her in the head, causing a cut which morphed into a scar.

A friend who was also inside the flat dabbed her head with tissue, but McCarthy huffed: “It’s only a cut.”

He later told the victim that he “didn’t hit her hard enough”.

Despite initially claiming that his wife had been injured after “falling over”, McCarthy was arrested and charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault and using controlling and coercive behaviour during the relationship.

He was convicted of all three offences and appeared for sentence on June 26.

Ms Kelly said that McCarthy, now of Auckland Way, Whitby, had four previous convictions including battery and harassing another former partner.

In a statement read out in court, the victim said the attacks had affected her psychological wellbeing and career.

She was now unemployed.

Neil Cutte, McCarthy’s solicitor advocate, said his client had no history of violence towards former partners and although currently unemployed, he had been trying to make a living selling jetsam and fossils found on the beach.

Judge Sean Morris said despite the seriousness of the offences, he could spare McCarthy jail because it appeared he was “ordinarily a decent man who quietly gets on with his life, doesn’t claim off the state and spends his time combing for (jetsam) and fossils to sell them to local shops for a living”.

McCarthy was given a nine-month prison sentence, but this was suspended for two years.

Mr Morris, the Recorder of York, said although he wasn’t sending McCarthy to jail, he was going to “lock you in your own home” by imposing a three-month curfew which would prohibit him leaving his home between 6pm and 5am daily.

He said an immediate prison sentence “wasn’t necessary, as it seems to me you are somebody who can change his ways” and the injury to the victim wasn’t as bad as first thought.

McCarthy was also ordered to complete 10 rehabilitation-activity days and participate in a Building Better Relationships programme.

He was ordered to pay the victim £100 compensation and made subject to a five-year restraining order for her protection.