A former soldier who uploaded 'intimate' photos of his partner to Twitter in revenge for being dumped has been jailed for two years.
John Connelly, 38, left his victim humiliated after posting private pictures online and sending them to her sister. The pair had met online but he became violent and jealous over the woman's previous relationships.
On one occasion he punched her head and broke her glasses after she deleted photos of him from her Facebook page when the relationship broke down. The couple got back together but Connelly smashed a patio door of her house with a slab after they split for second time.
In a string of email messages Connelly made a series of threats to publish intimate photos of his former lover. He wrote 'every one of your dirty pics are going all over the internet if you don't answer' followed by 'just going to fire all these pics all over Facebook then, it's up to you'.
The woman, 40, later received a message which read 'that's your pictures on Twitter'. She logged onto the social media site and saw herself tagged in a selection of explicit photographs on his Twitter page captioned 's***s everything going'.
He also sent the same photos to the woman's sister and police were called in. Connelly, of Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, denied abusing his partner between December 2020 and June 2021 and went on trial at Hamilton Sheriff Court.
Jurors took an hour to unanimously find him guilty after a four-day trial. Sheriff Colin Dunipace branded the yob, who has a string of previous convictions for domestic abuse, a 'danger to women' as he locked him up.
Connelly was also banned from contacting his victim for the next 10 years. Giving evidence from behind screens, the woman told depute fiscal Alice Carey how she was left traumatised by the revenge porn.
She said: "He had messaged me and then he had put explicit photos of me on Twitter. I was in extreme panic and I managed to screenshot the post.
"These was a post where he had tagged me and there was these photos I had personally sent to him when we were in a relationship. I reported it to Twitter and it was eventually taken down."
Dad-of-two Connelly repeatedly denied assaulting his victim and told jurors: "I'm the one telling the truth."
Eddie Robertson, defending, said: "These are serious matters before a jury and he knows all options are open to the court."
Sheriff Dunipace said: "The jury has found you guilty of a very serious matter and you subjected this lady to a horrific course of conduct. You assaulted her, broke into her property throwing a slab through the window and then you sought to humiliate her by posting intimate images of her on social media.
"You have three previous convictions for violence and seven for domestic offences including one of stalking. I consider you, quite frankly, to be a danger to women."
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