A ‘WOMAN-BEATER’ who strangled his girlfriend, bit her cheek and pinned her against a wall with a mattress was jailed.

Joshua Pitt, aged 25, of Thirlmere Place, Newport, appeared before the city’s crown court to appeal his conviction for assault by beating.

He was found guilty of the charge by magistrates but claimed his then partner had set him up with the police to “teach him a lesson”.

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Pitt said the woman had sent him a text message after his conviction showing she had concocted the story to frame him.

He denied assaulting her and told interviewing detectives how is then partner had had “a b***h fit”.

The complainant explained how she had met her “manipulative” ex after he was found guilty of assaulting her after he had threatened to commit suicide.

The pair had dined at Nando’s in Newport Retail Park and she explained how he must have sent the text to himself from her phone when she went to the toilet.

The message read: “Sorry I lied. I just wanted to teach you a lesson because otherwise you’ll never learn.”

Judge Daniel Williams, sitting with two magistrates, rejected Pitt’s version of events and dismissed his appeal.

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Nik Strobl, prosecuting, told Newport Crown Court: “On March 30, the appellant was drinking whisky at home and getting drunk.

“His partner was not feeling very well and she wanted to go to bed early as she had work the next morning and she asked the defendant to turn the television down.”

Mr Strobl said Pitt had lowered the TV volume but then turned it up again and the woman came and took the remote control off him.

She told the court in evidence: “If he was going to act like a child, then I was going to treat him like one.”

When she wouldn’t tell him where she had hidden the remote, Pitt picked up the mattress she was lying on in the bedroom and she fell on the floor.

He then picked up wooden slats from the broken bed and threw them at her which she threw back.

Pitt then started to “throttle” his victim and bit her cheek.

The woman said: “He put both his hands around my neck and I felt extremely light-headed. I almost passed out. He was strangling me.”

The attack only stopped when she managed to push a thumb into one of his eyes and she went to call the police.

She said: “He told me, ‘No babe! I’m on tag.’”

That related to a suspended jail sentence Pitt received just a few weeks earlier after being convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm against a man on Newport’s Cambrian Road on October 17, 2018.

The court heard the victim in that case was found by police with “black eyes, concussed and distressed”.

The court was told that the victim had branded her ex as a "woman beater" in a text message she sent him.

Stephen Thomas, mitigating, said his client suffers from “extreme autism”.

Judge Williams jailed Pitt for a total of eight months and told him he must pay a victim surcharge upon his release for prison.

He also imposed a restraining order preventing him from contacting his victim for two years.