Court / Lerwick man who subjected Aberdeen schoolgirl to almost daily domestic abuse jailed
Content warning: This story contains details of domestic abuse. If you have been affected by this issue, help is available.
A SHETLAND man who beat his then teenage girlfriend on a near daily basis has been jailed for historic domestic abuse.
Anthony Jamieson put his partner through four years of violence before she left him, almost 30 years ago.
Jamieson, from Norgaet in Lerwick, had previously admitted one charge of domestic abuse just before his case went to trial earlier this year at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
Now 60, Jamieson had been aged 36 when he started a relationship with the schoolgirl in Aberdeen.
The court heard Jamieson’s violent abuse began just weeks into the start of the relationship.
The girl lied to her family about how she had been receiving facial injuries and bruising – saying she had been fighting at school.
Fiscal depute Andrew Mann said Jamieson’s violent outbursts towards the girl would result in him dragging her by the hair and punching her repeatedly.
Jamieson was working offshore at the time, the court heard, but when on shore, he would “assault her on an almost daily basis”.
Mann continued: “[Jamieson] would punch her to the face and body, spit on her and pin her to the floor by her neck.
“Her parents observed the complainer to have bruising to her face and body however were not yet aware that accused was to blame.”
The court was told that the violence escalated after she moved in with Jamieson and, at times, she “thought she was going to die”.
Some of Jamieson’s assaults were witnessed by a family member of the woman after she called for assistance – and the court heard she would regularly phone her mother at all hours of the day in tears.
On one occasion, the court heard, Jamieson dragged her through the flat by her hair, intentionally striking her head on the walls and pushed her headfirst onto a bed.
Mann said: “He spat on her and swore at her – she managed to crawl to the living room and called her grandfather before locking herself in the bathroom.
“Her grandfather arrived as Jamieson was kicking the bathroom door.”
She fled the house with her grandfather but soon returned to live with Jamieson, the court was told. On another occasion the girl’s mother visited and saw blood-stained towels in the bathroom.
When she asked her daughter about them, she was told Jamieson had given her a “right good hiding” but refused to get medical treatment.
Around this time the complainer’s mother would receive phone calls, the court heard, and most of the calls were either silent or of the girl crying or saying “mum”.
The teen would never disclose what was going on around her but eventually left Jamieson in the late 1990s.
Jamieson’s defence agent Tommy Allan said his client was not disputing the Crown’s narration of events, but that his recollection of events 30 years ago was not clear.
“He accepts responsibility,” Allan said. “His behaviour spiralled through alcohol and drugs misuse.”
He said Jamieson had at that time worked offshore but was currently unemployed.
Allan asked for a community-based sentence for his client so he could “get back to a good life and earn some decent money”.
Sheriff Morag McLaughlan however said she could see no alternative but a custodial sentence having seen Jamieson’s previous domestic abuse record.
“There is no prospect of anything other than custody,” she said. “The narrative catalogues almost daily violence on a young and vulnerable woman.”
She sentenced Jamieson to 26 months in jail and ordered that he be placed under supervision on release for 12 months.
Sheriff McLaughlin also imposed a five-year non-harassment order preventing Jamieson from contacting the woman.
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