A judge has jailed a man who harassed his former partner, telling her: “You’re going to get your head kicked in because I’ve ordered it.”

Ian Newlands made the threat as as part of an aggressive attempt to get the woman to speak to him after arriving unannounced at her home in Alston on August 22, Carlisle’s Magistrates’ Court heard.

He admitted harassment.

Pam Ward, prosecuting, described how in July a court had imposed a restraining order on Newlands which forbids him from directly contacting the woman in any way other than through a third party to arrange contact with their child.

Yet on the day of the offence, he turned up outside her home.

He began yelling threats, said Mrs Ward, at one point saying he would get two women in Penrith to “kick her head in” and saying that as a result she should not go out in either Alston or Penrith.

The defendant then went to the back of the house and started banging on the window. The woman had the blinds down so he could not see her, said Mrs Ward. “Why won’t you speak to me,” Newlands yelled.

She replied loudly that she wanted him to go away. That was when he made the comment about ordering an attack on her. The woman told police that she had tried to get Newlands “out of her life” and that her problems with him had made her want to move.

“But he’d find me where-ever I was,” she said. “And I don’t want to move.”

Paul Tweddle, for Newlands, of The Firs, Alston, said that the defendant had not been happy with the child care arrangements that were in place but he accepted his behaviour that day was not the best way to resolve this.

Mr Tweddle said his client never had any intention to harm the woman. District Judge Gerald Chalk pointed out that it was the second time that Newlands had breached the restraining order, which was made on July 14, and the defendant, he said, had shown an inability to deal with the non-custodial sentence given to him on the earlier occasion.

He jailed Newlands for 120 days. The judge also ruled that Newlands should be under Probation Service Supervision for a year and he should pay a £115 victim surcharge.

The judge added: “If you breach the order again you will go back to prison; and I will happily send you back there if you continue to breach court orders.”