A jealous ex-partner smashed down his ex-partner’s bedroom door and attacked a man while he slept, a court has heard.
The 28-year-old Shepparton man pleaded guilty in Melbourne County Court to intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury and contravention of an intervention order, as well as a summary charge of trespass.
The court heard the man and another person went to his ex-partner of three years’ Shepparton house on May 8, 2021, after seeing her earlier at a party.
There, the accused told a housemate to go back to her own room before barging through his ex-partner’s locked bedroom door where she and another man were in bed.
The other man was attacked as he lay in bed, being punched in the head and torso and kicked.
The accused then smashed a mirror over the other man’s head.
The woman tried to stop the attack and was knocked to the floor.
The man who was attacked tried to run from the house, but was caught by the accused in the hallway, before running into the front yard.
Two other people, who had come back to the house from the party, managed to separate the men outside the house.
In an interview, the accused man told police he had gone to the house to make sure the woman was okay after she had left the party.
He said he knocked on the bedroom door and when he heard two voices he broke the door down and “just lost it” when he saw the man.
In sentencing the man, Judge Daniel Holding said the offending was serious.
“Victims of family violence must be protected,” he said.
He noted the man’s defence counsel had said the man had no prior convictions, and “had not put a foot wrong” since being bailed two years earlier.
The judge noted the man was relatively young, had a difficult background without family support and had an “outstanding work ethic” and now employed people.
He also said that since being bailed the man had completed a men’s behaviour change program and had received counselling for alcohol use.
While he accepted the man’s prospects of rehabilitation were excellent, Judge Holding said the male victim had done nothing to deserve the assault.
Judge Holding sentenced the man to the 34 days in prison that he had served in pre-sentence detention, as well as a 12-month community corrections order.
Under the corrections order he must undergo treatment and rehabilitation for alcohol use and mental health.
The man was also fined $3000 for intentionally causing injury to his male victim and $1000 for trespassing on the property.