A notorious domestic abuser assaulted his new partner just a few weeks after he escaped jail for battering his last girlfriend.
Barber Gary Herron was spared prison in February by a judge who said he deserved “to go to prison straight away” for what he described as “quite appalling” behaviour.
The 38-year-old had subjected his ex to months of toxic and demeaning abuse including trying to pour bleach down her throat.
But he was spared prison because he was already subject to a domestic violence programme and the judge felt “promoting his rehabilitation” was “also important” and so handed him a suspended two-year sentence.
Now, incredibly, we can reveal Herron couldn’t keep his fists to himself for long – it has emerged just ten weeks later he breached that suspended sentence by assaulting his new partner.
Herron is due to be sentenced at Lisburn Magistrates Court later this month after he was found guilty after a trial of assaulting his ex.
According to court papers, Herron, of Bells Manor Castledawson, was also found guilty of attempted criminal damage of a chest of drawers belonging to the same injured party and a further charge of breaching his bail.
The new shameful convictions come after his last victim – the woman whose throat Herron had tried to pour bleach down – spoke publicly at her horror he had only got a suspended sentence for what he did to her.
She warned other women how dangerous Herron was and that they should “stay away” from him.
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Last night a source who knows Herron says he has burnt all his bridges now.
“He’s going to jail for sure after this,” they told us. “He kept getting chance after chance and when the judge in February chose to give him a suspended sentence and hoped he would be rehabilitated, nobody could believe how lucky he was.
“He had put that woman through a terrible time – making threats to kill her and her son and then trying to pour bleach down her throat. He should really have been locked up for a long time.
“But instead of taking the hint that he should change his ways, he assaults another girlfriend.”
Gary Herron
In February Herron appeared at Antrim Crown Court and was due to go on trial facing six offences, including attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm, but he entered eleventh-hour dock confessions to causing actual bodily harm, possessing a hammer as a weapon and supplying class A ecstasy on June 23, 2023, and a further charge of domestic abuse by engaging in an abusive course of behaviour on dates between March 1, 2022, and February 16, 2023.
The court was told Herron and his ex-had been in a “fairly toxic relationship” where there was “tit-for-tat” abusive messaging and in addition to these offences. The defendant had admitted lesser offences in the Magistrates Court and had been put on probation for them.
But Herron had continued to subject her to disgusting abuse which culminated in an attack after the couple had gone to a concert in Belfast.
She reported that Herron had struck her to the side of the head with either a kick or a punch and that had knocked her to the floor and caused a “golf ball sized swelling” to the side of her head and while she was on the floor, the victim called a friend to come and help her.
When that Good Samaritan pulled up outside Herron’s home he came out “brandishing and swinging a hammer in a threatening manner” but never actually used the weapon.
Sentencing Herron, Judge Babington said while the relationship may well have been toxic, “there is no excuse in today’s society for treating a woman in the way that you did…your behaviour was quite appalling.”
The judge added that while a prison sentence “will punish you and protect the public, especially the female part of our community, promoting your rehabilitation is also important” so instead of jailing him he was imposing – “after careful consideration” – a two-year jail sentence, suspended for two years.
Speaking out after Herron walked free, the victim of those attacks spoke out.
“I am absolutely disgusted. I’ve lost my career, friends and even family, all over him,” she said.
“People would say ‘Why didn’t you leave?’ but it was easier to keep him close where I could keep watch. When I didn’t know what he was up to. I was afraid.
“He destroyed my life. He is a dangerous man and women need to stay away.”
She explained how he initially love-bombed her before turning nasty – even sending her pictures of himself in bed with other women.
“Within a week, he had my name tattooed on him and had hit me. During a trip to Portrush, he held me over a balcony because he caught me smoking,” she said.
“He threw water round me and threatened to lift my baby out of the cot and chuck us out of the room. It wasn’t the smoking really. He thought I was texting another man.
“We went on another holiday and he found an old photo on my phone of my baby and their daddy. He lifted me out of bed by the hair and forced his hand into my mouth, making me bleed. He even tried to pour bleach down my throat.
“He cheated on me a few times as well. He told me it was my fault and sent me pictures of him in bed with a girl, telling me if I didn’t want it to happen again, I needed to buck up my ideas.”
“I’d just had a baby when I met him and Gary built me up after I was down. It was textbook stuff, all ‘there’s no one like you’ and ‘I’ll look after you and your baby’.
“Because of all that I minimised negative things he did and thought ‘Oh he’s just a bit demanding’. He would apologise and try and make it go away.
“Every time I tried to finish it, he started making my life even more of a misery. He would turn up to my workplace and call them repeatedly. It was a nightmare.
“After I finished it, he left me these horrific voicemails threatening to stab me and my son, stamp on my wee boy’s head and kill both of us.”
Herron is due back in court for sentencing for his latest offences on November 18.