A BULLYING boyfriend was today starting a 21-month sentence for what a judge described as “very serious and persistent violence”.

Ryan Johnson viciously attacked his partner three times over a year before she finally went to police to report the 20-year-old abuser.

He was on a suspended prison sentence throughout that time for an assault on his sister which left her needing 47 stitches in a mouth wound.

Teesside Crown Court heard Johnson’s victim is now afraid to answer the door, and if she goes out, has to ask a relative to meet her to feel safe.

In a statement she said: “He scares me. If I hear a loud knock, it makes my pulse race and my palms sweaty. I want nothing else to do with him.”

Prosecutor Sam Faulks told the court Johnson first attacked her last March, when he punched her in the face and left her with a black eye.

During a row in February this year, he demanded the presents back he bought her for Christmas - but lashed out when she took off a top she was wearing.

After trying to lock herself in a bathroom, Johnson kicked in the door and kneed her, leaving her with a cut eye which needed medical treatment.

The next month, while she was in the bath at her flat, he pulled her hair and repeatedly punched her in the stomach - “so no-one would see the bruises”.

Paul Abrahams, mitigating, said: “The defendant is clearly immature and has problems with anger-management. He knows he needs to address that.”

Johnson, of Harold Hornsey Square, Hartlepool, admitted two charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault, damaging property and breaching a non-molestation order.

The court heard that he also smashed a window at the home of his partner’s mother, and sent an abusive text message to her sister, threatening to put intimate photographs on Facebook.

Judge Stephen Ashurst told him: “It seems clear this short-lived relationship was marred by considerable aggression and violence from you.

“People like you, who abuse their partners, put them in fear so that they are worried about answering the door and fearful of the consequences when they have done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

“You treated her very badly indeed, and that’s demonstrated by three separate occasions when you used quite unnecessary violence upon her.”