A MAN stormed into his ex-girlfriend’s flat with a baseball bat after she sent him suggestive text messages about other men.

Jack Hogan assaulted Kim Brinton in her Didcot flat and pushed her “by the throat against a cupboard” before “slapping her so hard she was thrown across the room”.

The 26-year-old let himself in to the property in Broadway at 5.30am on February 13 after finishing a nightshift at work and confronted his ex-partner who was naked in bed with a man.

Hogan admitted affray and assault by beating and was given a suspended prison sentence at Oxford Crown Court on Friday.

Deirdre Philpott, prosecuting, said the pair’s relationship ended in September 2010 and Hogan had moved out of the flat but still had a key.

She said: “On February 12, the complainant and a girlfriend went out to licensed premises where they met with two men and the two men came back to the complainant’s flat with the two ladies where they all retired to bed. At 5.30am the complainant was woken up by the presence of the defendant in her bedroom. He tapped her on the arm and she woke up.

“He was carrying a baseball bat and pulled the covers off the bed, thereby waking her male companion, a Mr Tom Smith. Mr Hogan was angry and abusive to both. He assaulted Miss Brinton by initially preventing her from getting out of the bed. She eventually did so and put on some covering because she had been naked up until then.

“Mr Smith had retreated to the other room where the other two parties had woken up. All were extremely frightened by what appeared to be going on. They could hear banging and crashing and the complainant would say that’s the defendant pushing her by the throat against a cupboard and slapping her so hard she was thrown across the room.”

When Hogan, of Harwood Road, East Hagbourne, was arrested at the scene he was heard shouting “You whore” at Miss Brinton.

Richard Lister, defending, said of his client: “He feels his behaviour was fairly shocking and he explains it was a lapse of his normal excellent self-control brought about by a series of increasingly explicit texts he received, including some photographs.”

Recorder Richard Hamlin said: “This is an extraordinary case.

“That you lost your self-control is clear and the spur it appears is that on your occasional meetings she had mentioned men she was with and she had on this occasion sent texts to say she was with a man that night, (there was) perhaps even a photograph attached to that text.”

Hogan was given a six-month jail term, suspended for a year, and given six months’ supervision. He must pay £385 costs and a restraining order was imposed.