A man “crossed the line” when he started shouting, swearing and refusing to leave his girlfriend’s home, a court has heard.
Josh Anderson’s victim woke to find him staring at her from the bottom of her bed before he began hurling demands that she pack his things and help him leave her home.
He got “right into her face” and threatened her that “if anyone else had spoken to me like that they would be finished,” Elgin Sheriff Court was told.
Fiscal depute Emma MacEwan said the woman was left “crying down the phone hysterically” to her sister after the early-morning incident on April 24 last year.
‘He got right into her face’
“At 8.30am she awoke to find the accused fully dressed standing at the end of her bed staring at her,” she said.
“He immediately began shouting. She described him as being aggressive throughout, shouting and swearing and refusing to leave the flat.
“He told her ‘If anyone else had spoken to me in that way they would be finished’.
“She got up and went to the kitchen and was followed by the accused.
“He demanded she pack his stuff in a bag but was told there was not one. He got right into her face.”
Anderson then made reference to having hurt someone’s legs in a previous attack and a struggle ensued after she called him out for “being pathetic”.
When he again followed her into the bedroom the woman called her mother to come and collect her as she was “scared”.
The court was told that after the call the situation escalated when Anderson injured the woman by jumping onto the bed and landing on her leg.
Anderson was traced by officers and later admitted behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by shouting, swearing and refusing to leave the property.
Relationship now ‘completely at an end’
Defence agent Stephen Carty said his client’s conduct “crossed a line” and went “well beyond what was acceptable” but that “insults had been exchanged by both parties”.
But he said he’d been staying there for three days and they’d been in an on-off relationship for some time. That relationship is now completely over.
Sheriff Robert McDonald told Anderson: “Mr Carty said you had crossed a line. I would say you went well beyond that line. That’s no way to behave towards a partner.
“You need to change your attitude towards people you are involved with.”
He ordered Anderson, of Covesea, Elgin, to carry out 108 hours of unpaid work, participate in the Choose to Change domestic abuse programme and be subject to a two-year supervision order and three-year non-harassment order.
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