A WIFE-BEATING alcoholic whose victim’s forgiveness once saved him from prison has been locked up.
Michael Larsen was spared jail last November despite 23 police calls in nine years to deal with his domestic violence after drinking.
The 36-year-old admitted an actual bodily harm assault on his wife Angela, who asked a judge to allow him home.
Judge Peter Fox QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, gave him a six-month jail sentence suspended for 12 months with supervision and ordered him to attend a domestic violence programme.
The judge then said: “You are a very lucky man having a wife who forgives you as she does and who wants you back despite you beating her up as you did when you were drunk. I don’t have the confidence in you that she has so it’s thanks to her, not anyone else, that I am giving you this chance.�
This week, he was back before Teesside Crown Court to be sentenced for his second breach of that suspended sentence order.
Prosecutor Benjamin Boucher-Giles said Larsen had completed the domestic violence programme.
For his first breach of the suspended sentence, magistrates ordered him to live at a probation hostel for three months in April.
“The grounds for the current breach are that his behaviour since deteriorated due to alcoholism,� said Mr Boucher-Giles.
Graeme Gaston, defending, said Larsen was asked to leave the hostel because of his drinking, which was “an ongoing problem�.
But he was otherwise doing well with his supervision.
He is also awaiting sentence for an admitted shop theft of a bottle of cider in July.
Larsen, now of Marton Road, Middlesbrough, was remanded in custody until September 7.
Last November, the court heard how his wife had given him chances before. But the “last straw� was when he punched her in the face.
He assaulted her after she complained he had spent money on drink on the day they faced eviction from their home for rent arrears.
She later told police she wanted to withdraw her complaint, and wrote to Judge Fox asking that he be released from custody.
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