A 25-YEAR-OLD who embarked on an abusive and controlling relationship with a pensioner before striking her in an attack at her home has been jailed.

Qais Ahmed was fighting with his 66-year-old victim’s son when he ‘recklessly’ struck her causing an ‘unpleasant’ injury.

Prosecutors said that the single episode of violence followed an ‘abusive’ relationship between the pair.

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The 25-year-old of Albert Street, Banbury, had already admitted one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one of causing criminal damage.

He was sentenced for those crimes at Oxford Crown Court yesterday.

Outlining the case, prosecutor Julian Lynch said Ahmed initially developed a relationship with his 66-year-old victim in Banbury.

That relationship became ‘abusive’, he said, and involved Ahmed telling the woman to say to a camera that she had wet herself.

He also told her to say, while being filmed, that she was a ‘compulsive liar’ and also a drug user.

Ahmed also called her ‘fat’ and ‘disgusting.’

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Mr Lynch said the relationship between the pair involved an ‘unequal power dynamic and abusive behaviour.’

The abuse culminated in a violent incident in November last year.

Ahmed got into an argument with the woman’s son about an allegation of putting something in his drink.

A fight broke out and it was during this violence that Ahmed struck the woman.

He hit her to the face with the back of his hand.

Ahmed said he didn’t intend to hit the woman, which the prosecution accepted at the sentencing hearing.

During the scuffle he also damaged furniture at the address.

The court went on to hear that Ahmed has a series of previous criminal convictions to his name, made up of 34 past offences.

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Of these previous convictions, five were for violent crimes and three for public order matters.

In mitigation, Kellie Enever, defending, said her client had been a young man with a ‘bright future.’

She added that he came from a hard-working family background and she described the assault as being ‘reckless.’

She said the victim of the assault had ‘been caught in the crossfire.’

Sentencing, Judge Peter Ross said: “There is clear evidence within the background to the assault of an abusive, controlling, coercive relationship.

“A power that you exercised over [her], a power that sprung in my view from drugs.”

Ahmed was jailed for a total of two years made up of two years for the assault concurrent with three months for the criminal damage.

He must also pay a victim surcharge and he was made subject to a restraining order against his victim for 10 years.