A body-building thug, who gouged his pregnant girlfriend’s eyes for ‘liking’ a Facebook post, smiled as a judge recalled his twisted violence.

Danny Bridges, 35, from Whitstable smirked as a court heard he throttled, kneed, punched the young woman before jamming his thumbs into her eyes.

Judge Rupert Lowe today described how Bridges beat his victim’s legs and kneed her to the spine as part of his attack.

He then told Bridges: “I note for the record that you smile as I recount these facts.”

The bricklayer was found guilty of false imprisonment and two counts of actual bodily harm in May after the attack last October.

Today at Canterbury Crown Court, Judge Lowe sentenced the “psychologically controlling” abuser to nine years behind bars, stressing his potential danger to women.

“You stuck your finger in her eyes turning her eye-lids inside out," he said.

"She thought her eyes were going to pop out altogether. She was so frightened she thought she was going to die.

“You are just another violent abuser of women. You have not shown any sympathy or empathy to those closest to you.

“You are selfish, angry and violent.

“I have no hesitation in finding that you pose a significant risk of harm to future partners. It is impossible to tell if you are lying or living in an alternative reality.”

Bridges protested his innocence throughout proceedings and claimed his victim’s injuries flared following a string of implausible accidents.

Today Bridges even handed the judge a note protesting he’d been stitched up in an elaborate police conspiracy.

His victim too wrote the judge a note - who grimaced after reading it - claiming Bridges had not abused her.

To stop friends and family seeing his girlfriend’s black and blue face he imprisoned her.

She then texted a friend pleading they called 999.

Police stormed Bridges' Station Road flat on November 2, 2018, and arrested him before discovering his victim in a bedroom with serious facial bruising.

Her police statement said Bridges got angry after she "loved" a male friend’s Facebook post.

“With every punch I remember seeing white flashes in my eyes - he managed to stick his fingers in my eyes by this point.

“He somehow managed to peel the eyelids back and it turned inside out.

“It hurt so much I thought I was going to be sick, I thought my eye was going to pop out.

“He then told me he was going to kick the baby out of me.”

But she would refuse to accuse her attacker of the violence at trial, claiming her injuries came from falling and rough sex, prompting a startling exchange with the judge.

She told the court her bruising was caused by falling down stairs and face first into a toilet.

She claimed she then got several other bruises during sex with Bridges.

Judge Rupert Lowe said: “So after you fell down the stairs and injured your back, you went to bed, got up, tripped over a table, then tripped over a rug and hit your face against the toilet seat causing a pretty nasty injury.

“Then you were sick, got back into bed, and then had sexual intercourse?”

She replied: “Yes.”

"He then told me he was going to kick the baby out of me" - Bridges' victim

The victim, who has been regularly visiting Bridges in jail, said police pressured her into giving a statement and only alerted the force to Bridge’s address to “get him in trouble for something else.”

But a jury took less than an hour to find Bridges, represented by Gregory Fishwick, guilty during the May trial.

Judge Lowe said Bridge’s denial of the attack - alongside previous assaults against women – was an “aggravating factor.”

Bridges has a long history of cruelty behind him, racking up 13 violent convictions and 22 in total.

The jury heard Bridges knocked his sister unconscious and assaulted his mum in 2002.

In 2013 he hit another girlfriend before starting a relationship with a teenager.

The court heard in 2017 he strangled another woman with a duvet, forced a spanner into her ribs and placed his knee over her windpipe.

To read more of our in depth coverage of all of the major trials coming out of crown and magistrates' courts across the county, click here

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