Banbury abuser who met victim on Hinge is branded 'devil'

Joseph Griffiths’ victim bravely told Oxford Crown Court that she felt ‘lucky to be alive’, branded her ex-partner ‘evil’, and raised fears that he would treat women in the same way in future.

Jailing the 26-year-old for three-and-half years on Friday (August 18), judge Recorder John Bate-Williams said: “You clearly never learned the very basic rule we all learned in the playground at primary school and that is you never ever hit a woman.

“It astonishes me to see the contrast between, frankly, the devil who was behaving so disgracefully to the victim and the man described in the various references who has a very different side to his character.”

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The court heard that Griffiths met his victim on Hinge, described by the judge as ‘one of the more respectable dating apps’, at the start of the year.

Their relationship began well, with the woman detecting no ‘immediate red flags’. He told her that he had been to prison, but claimed that the woman whose testimony sent him there had ‘lied’ and it was a false accusation.

Almost as soon as their relationship began, he moved into her home in Banbury. The first flash of anger came during a play fight, when he snapped – causing her to suffer a panic attack.

In other attacks in February, she was slapped, punched, throttled and even spat at. He threatened to harm her pet dog, reacting brutishly if it made a sound.

She fled the house after a final assault that saw her repeatedly punched and throttled, and managed to call the police having hidden her phone in her underwear.

Later, after she went to the police, he tried to get her to withdraw her support for the investigation. Both he and his friends contacted the woman.

During a meeting at the start of March, Griffiths shouted at her. Bravely, she stood her ground and said that she was sick of how he had left bruises on her.

He replied with a chilling threat of what would happen if she did not call off the police. “If you don’t pack it in I will leave more [bruises],” he said.

'He would have killed me'

Reading her impact statement from the witness box on Friday, the victim said Griffiths had been in the house with her ‘constantly’. She had not even been able to take a shower without him coming into the bathroom.

A student nurse, she said she felt ‘trapped in my own home, held hostage by a complete stranger’. “If I didn’t escape that day I believe he would have killed me,” she added.

The woman expressed her concern that he would ‘do this to other women’, saying he ‘isn’t safe to be on the streets’ and that she felt ‘lucky to be alive’.

“In the space of a month he has ruined my life,” she said, adding: “I can’t get my head around how someone could be so evil.”

Griffiths, of Queens Road, Loughborough, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to controlling and coercive behaviour, intentional strangulation, causing actual bodily harm and witness intimidation.

He had two previous convictions for five offences, with both sets of convictions involving violence against women.

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In mitigation, Gordana Austin detailed her client’s struggles with his mental health, his remorse and acknowledgment that what he did was wrong. He had previously had difficulties with steroids.

Sentencing, Recorder Bate-Williams acknowledged Griffiths’ ‘genuine remorse’ but told the defendant he had taken over his victim’s home ‘and, I would say, her soul’.

A restraining order bans Griffiths from contacting his victim for life.

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