(Image: North Yorkshire Police)
A MAN charged with domestic abuse phoned the alleged victim hundreds of times from prison as he persuaded her to get the case against him dropped, York Crown Court heard.
Vincent James Sherwood, 48, told the woman what to say to police, including accusing officers of pressurising her into making her allegations, that when she made them she had been drunk and that she had been angry (with Sherwood), said Daisy Wrigley, prosecuting.
He was in prison on remand facing charges that he had strangled the woman three times, suffocated her three times, caused criminal damage and behaved in a controlling and coercive way towards her.
The woman did retract her statement and the domestic abuse allegations were dropped, said the barrister.
Sherwood, of no fixed address, was then charged with and admitted perverting the course of justice.
The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said Sherwood had persuaded the woman to retract her statement “against her own interests” and the only mitigation was his guilty plea.
He should not get a lesser sentence by getting one set of offences dropped and then pleading to perverting the course of justice.
He jailed Sherwood for four years and banned him from contacting the woman and being at any address where she was or in her company for eight years.
Sherwood has previous convictions for breaching a domestic violence protection order.
Defence barrister Graham Parkin said prisoners can only use prison phones with the use of a personal PIN which will only allow them to ring numbers approved by prison staff.
“I cannot see how the woman’s number was approved,” he said. Prisoners’ calls are recorded and are listened to by prison officers.
He said that Sherwood had been in prison at the time of one of the alleged strangulations.
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Ms Wrigley said Sherwood made hundreds of calls to the woman between January 12 and February 13 this year from prison.
Fifty-eight of the calls include reference to the domestic abuse case and requests for the woman to retract her statement.
Ms Wrigley said there were 197 pages of transcript of Sherwood’s calls to the woman.
At one point, Sherwood asked for the woman to give him another number and another name.
The transcripts say he told her: “Are you going to help me get out? I need to get out by February 16 - when he was due to appear before York Crown Court to enter his pleas to the domestic abuse charges - or I am going to be in her for six months”.
He also told her: “You need to go to the police station” and she told him she would get into trouble if she did as he asked.
He told her to tell the police “she felt pressurised and intimidated by the police to make the statement”.
She told him she could not tell the police she had made up the allegations and he told her “just say you were drunk, just say you were angry,” said Ms Wrigley.
The Prison Service has been approached for a comment.