A 'COWARD' and 'monster' who subjected his former partner to what a judge called "gratuitously appalling" controlling and coercive behaviour during their relationship, has been jailed for a total of four years and three months.

Gareth Morton-Jenkins controlled his victim's bank accounts, taking out cash on her pay days, and telephoned her multiple times when she was at work, prosecuting counsel Suzanne Payne told a sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court.

They were together from December 2015 until August last year. In one three-month period alone, phone details revealed he had made 1,272 calls to her.

Ms Payne also told Judge David Wynn Morgan that the woman's mother had also told of her daughter having been assaulted numerous times.

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Letters to his victim from prison, when he was serving time for other offences, also displayed signs of controlling behaviour.

He had, said Ms Payne, disrupted her evenings out with friends, accused her male co-workers at a fast food restaurant of having affairs with her, and damaged her flat and items in it.

The situation came to a head last August when the woman reported being headbutted at home by Morton-Jenkins. He was subsequently charged with assault by beating and with using controlling and coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. He pleaded guilty to both charges.

In a statement read in court, the woman told of how she was the victim of "numerous assaults and had every aspect of my life controlled".

She described having no freedom, and of being "sucked into feeling I had done something wrong". She has flashbacks and said it "still feels as though he is inside my head".

"I never want to see him again. Gareth feels like a monster to me," she said.

Morton-Jenkins, 35, of Oaksford, Coed Eva, Cwmbran, "accepts this is a totally unacceptable way to treat anyone, not least someone you are in a relationship with", said defence counsel David Pinnell.

"He accepts this amounts to terrible treatment at his hands."

Morton-Jenkins was on licence for previous offences, including the extension period of a lengthy sentence for robbery committed in 2012, during which he punched a woman in the face.

Judge Wynn Morgan jailed Morton-Jenkins for 18 months for the assault and two-and-a-half years for the controlling and coercive behaviour - a total of four years and three months - and told him his behaviour towards his former partner "has had a most dreadful ongoing effect upon her" and amounted to "gratuitous degradation".

He described Morton-Jenkins' controlling and coercive behaviour as "a persistent action over a prolonged period, involving multiple methods".

"You created a fear of violence on many occasions. You caused her to suffer serious alarm or distress which has had a substantial adverse effect upon her.

"You have behaved despicably. Your conduct through the last 10 years has been gratuitously appalling, particularly towards women.

"Men who hit women are cowards, and you are a coward, and you will now serve approaching four-and-a-half years in prison as a result of your cowardice."

A restraining order has also been imposed on Morton-Jenkins, barring him from contacting his former partner indefinitely.