By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:33, Friday, 17 August 2012

A man has been sent to prison for the eighth time for pestering his ex-partner.

Andrew Joseph McClements

Andrew McClements, 47, has caused so much trouble in Frizington, the village near Whitehaven in which he and Donna Stephenson still both live, that a judge at Carlisle Crown Court said it would probably be better if he left the area altogether.

McClements – described by a probation officer as being of “imminent and high risk” of violence against the woman who, until their stormy break-up, had been his partner for 12 years – pleaded guilty to his seventh breach of the court order intended to keep him away from her.

The court heard he spent nearly half an hour in her garden, despite having been ordered by a judge to go nowhere near it.

He was jailed for two years – the longest sentence of all those imposed on him for flouting the court order in the past.

The judge imposed a new restraining order, banning him from contacting Ms Stephenson in any way, and from entering a specially designated area around her home for the next three years.

The judge warned him that if he broke this order he would go to prison for something approaching the maximum sentence allowed for such an offence – five years.

Prosecuting counsel Jacob Dyer told the court that trouble between the couple started in 2006 when, after harassing her, he was jailed for a year for causing her actual bodily harm by punching her in the face.

He had been sent to prison six times since, he said, for harassment, assault or disregarding the court orders imposed to stop him contacting her.

The latest episode came on May 4, he said, when Ms Stephenson saw him “moving things around” in the garden outside her house in Griffin Close. He was arrested but released on bail on condition that he did not go within a quarter of a mile of the house.

But a week later he was seen nearby again, and on May 28 wrote to her father saying he was not going to give up on his relationship with her. All these contravened the court order.

In mitigation, defence advocate Mark Shepherd said McClements claimed he had been in the Griffin Close area only because he understood that, despite the court order, he was allowed to go to the nearby lock-up garage where he kept the tools for his electrician’s business.

“All he wants to do is to be able to live his life and work,” he said.

Judge Peter Hughes QC said he wondered if McClements needed to visit the garage only because it was “a toe-hold” giving him an excuse to go near his former partner’s home.

“The fact is that he needs to leave Frizington altogether,” he said. “As long as he remains in Frizington there are going to be problems.”

First published at 11:29, Friday, 17 August 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk