(Image: Durham Constabulary)
A drink- and drug-fuelled addict who subjected his wife to years of "horrific" abuse bombarded her with messages and tracked her movements even after they'd broken up.
Daniel William Grainger and the woman separated late last year after 15 years, but Teesside Crown Court heard it wasn't until he was arrested in March that she finally felt free from him.
After the break-up, he launched a stalking campaign to track her movements and keep her living in fear.
The court heard the pair got together in 2011, when she was 17, and it was her first meaningful relationship.
Prosecutor Edison Flint said things began well but deteriorated as Grainger became increasingly jealous and controlling, isolating his wife from friends and family, monitoring her communications, dictating what she could wear and subjecting her to degrading treatment and threats, including threatening to kill himself, all between January 2021 and November last year.
After a move to Middleton St George, she could not go out for the evening unless Grainger went too and felt she was, “constantly walking on eggshells”.
He forced her to wear baggy clothes and falsely accused her of cheating on him, Mr Flint said.
Grainger controlled their money, threatened to cut her off financially and stopped her posting pictures on social media.
After the break-up, he bombarded her with texts and calls from different numbers and turned up uninvited at her home.
In her victim statement, she said the relationship became unbearable and Grainger constantly harassed her after it ended.
Her phone was smashed, her car was vandalised and she developed PTSD.
As he faced sentence, she said she felt like “a survivor of the horrific abuse suffered at his hands”.
Grainger, of Ridsdale Street, Darlington, appeared by video link from Holme House Prison, Stockton, on Thursday (October 8), a day after turning 40.
He admitted controlling and coercive behaviour and stalking after changing his pleas on the day his trial was due to start in August.
The court heard Grainger’s limited criminal record included a 2011 battery and a 2021 caution for stalking, both against the same woman.
In mitigation, Thomas Cowan said Grainger has been in custody since March.
He said the controlling behaviour charge covered five years of an "on-off relationship" marked by rows linked to Grainger’s drug and alcohol problems.
After moving out, he reacted badly when she failed to reply to his messages.
Mr Cowan said his client would “drink to excess and then turn to use of cocaine” to cope with mental health problems at the time.
“They would fall out, but there were times they got on and things would calm down.
“They would talk to each other, but then it would happen again and again.”
Mr Cowan said Grainger has come to accept the manner of his behaviour since being remanded in custody and has made “enormous strides” while in prison to turn his life around.
Recorder Paul Reid told Grainger it was among the worst cases of its kind he had had the “misfortune” to hear.
He said Grainger’s domestic violence against his wife was “brutal and aggressive” in what was an increasingly "toxic relationship".
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The Recorder said Grainger’s wife now relishes being free of “this angry man” and no longer being “the victim”.
He said Grainger would receive only a minimal sentence reduction because of his late guilty pleas.
Alongside a total 54-month jail term imposed, Recorder Reid put in place an indefinite restraining order forbidding Grainger from contacting or approaching his victim.