A man who threatened to kill his partner with a sledgehammer and strangled another ex-girlfriend has been jailed for more than four years.
Benjamin Dobson, 33, from Huby, made both women’s lives a “misery” during the ill-fated relationships which were permeated with brutal violence, control-freakery and savage behaviour on Dobson’s part, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Jade Bucklow said that one of the named victims, who were both mothers, was threatened with a sledgehammer, had her head banged against a kitchen worktop and throttled during a terrifying incident on 4 June.
It began when the victim – who had been in an “unhappy” relationship with Dobson since early 2024 – was having a family dinner with him.
When she asked him to “help around the house a bit more”, Dobson “snapped” and threw a plate of food to the floor, then demanded her mobile phone, accusing her of “hiding something from him”.
He then smashed her tumble drier with a sledgehammer and threw her phone onto the glass kitchen table, causing it to smash.
She retreated outside where Dobson, still brandishing the sledgehammer, told her: “If you don’t come within three seconds, I’m going to smash your head with this hammer and I won’t stop until you are dead, and I will drag you by your hair onto next-door’s doorstep to make an example of you.”
The victim then hurried into the kitchen where Dobson grabbed her by the throat and repeatedly hit her head on the worktop. He then took her phone and car keys to prevent her from leaving.
The petrified victim burst into tears and retreated to a sofa where she tried to sleep but couldn’t “out of fear”.
Dobson was later arrested outside the property.
The victim said in a statement that she now struggled to sleep and felt “constantly on edge”.
She added: “If I’d have continued the relationship I wouldn’t have made it out. I feel a complete idiot for falling into his lies. I was manipulated; he was so convincing.”
During the relationship, Dobson tried to isolate her from friends and family, was “paranoid” that she was seeing someone else and threatened to drive his truck through her house.
He had “controlled my finances” during the relationship, the last six months of which were “absolutely awful”.
‘Terrified on a daily basis’
Dobson was on bail at the time having been arrested for offences against the other woman who had been in a relationship with him since October 2010.
On New Year’s Day, 2016, he returned home after having been out drinking all night and threw the Christmas tree across the house, destroying it
Dobson then grabbed her jaw, telling her he would “rip your jaw out”.
In another incident in November 2017, Dobson kicked at her door with such force she thought it was about to break, got into the house and threatened to kill her.
He then strangled her but was pulled off by Dobson’s father who had been called by the victim who fled the house
Ms Bucklow said that Dobson had “controlled all facets of (the victim’s) life throughout the relationship” including by dictating what clothes she could wear, namely “shapeless” jogging and tracksuit bottoms.
He also wouldn’t let her work after she gave birth, checked her social-media accounts, called her abusive names and unjustifiably accused her of infidelity. It resulted in her social circle simply “disappearing”.
Reading out her victim statement in court, the mother-of-two read said she was “terrified on a daily basis” during her relationship with Dobson.
“I’ve survived, but I’ll never be the same person,” she added. “I’m a shadow of the person I used to be.”
Her ordeal lasted some two half-and-a-half years, between December 2015 and July 2018.
Dobson, a father-of-one, was charged with controlling and coercive behaviour against her and assault, damaging property and making a threat to kill against the other victim.
Lifetime restraining order
He ultimately admitted all the offences and appeared for sentence via video link yesterday (Sunday) after being remanded in custody.
Prosecuting barrister Miss Bucklow said that Dobson, of Tollerton Road, Huby, had a track record for domestic violence.
In 2021, he was jailed for two years and ten months after waging a campaign of “absolute terror” on another former partner lasting almost two years.
Dobson threatened to kill the woman and members of her family during a series of incidents described by a judge as “one of the worst (of its type)” he had ever seen.
In one incident in 2018, he drove down a lane in Haxby and stopped in a field, telling her it was the last time she would see her family. He even dug a hole and told her it would be “her last night”, before strangling her and allegedly hitting her in the face with a knuckle duster.
He then made her stay with him overnight in his van and eventually drove her back to a flat in York where he was living at the time.
He kept her holed up with him in the flat for about two days while she was in “constant pain” with her injuries.
Defence barrister Rhianydd Clement said that Dobson’s offending was “underpinned to an extent by his poor mental health” exacerbated by cannabis use.
Judge Simon Hickey told Dobson he had made the victims’ lives “a misery”.
Dobson was jailed for four-and-a-half years and made subject to a lifetime restraining order banning him from contacting the two victims and going to their homes or workplaces.
