A JEALOUS thug who left his girlfriend with a badly broken finger in a vicious and cowardly attack has been jailed for two years and three months.

Jay Stokes, 25, had been drinking when he bent the woman’s finger back because she got back late, at 9.45pm, after a night out with her sister.

After ranting and accusing her of going out meeting men, Stokes threw his drink in her face then twisted her left index finger leaving it badly broken and dislocated.

And when the pain got so much the following day, she went to the hospital where she had to undergo an operation to insert pins into the fractured digit.

But the court heard that he went with her and they told medics that she had suffered the injury by falling off a trampoline in the garden.

The 27-year-old mum-of-two took him back, but after a neighbour called the police following another incident months later, she told officers what had taken place.

Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that the pair had been in a volatile relationship for about a year before they split last November.

On Tuesday, June 7, last year she said she had been out drinking in the evening with her sister and he felt she was late back when she got in at 9.45pm.

As she was on the phone to another sister, who wanted her to go out again, he threw a glass of vodka and lemonade at her and accused her of ‘going out and meeting men’.

She went to bed where they argued again and he kicked her and threw a bin at her before twisting her finger so badly it broke.

When he was questioned in November he denied assault.

But before a jury could be sworn in on the first day of trial Stokes, of Bourne Road, Moredon, admitted causing grievous bodily harm. A charge of controlling or coercive behaviour was left to lie on file after he denied it.

The court heard he has a history of violence.

Miss Hingston said the victim now suffers night terrors.

Mike Pulsford, defending, said his client had undergone a great change in his attitude towards what he had done in recent times and asked for him to be spared jail.

He said there had not been any problems in his new relationship or in a previous one with the mother of his eight-year-old son.

If he could be spared jail he said that he had a job lined up and could receive help for what led to the offending.

Judge Tim Mousley QC said: “You showed that your behaviour has a jealous and controlling side to it.

“You reacted to her coming home late in the way I have heard about. You knew she had had a night out with friends.

“This is not the first time your feelings of jealousy have led to you losing control of yourself.

“You caused her excruciating pain. It was a complex fracture, it also involved a dislocation. Your behaviour was not only vicious but was also in my judgement cowardly.”