A FATHER of four who battered his partner after going to a swinging party in Buckfastleigh has been sentenced to 100 hours of unpaid work and banned from contacting her for a year.

Anthony Humphreys (pictured), 45, from Somerdale Avenue, Knowle, Bristol pleaded guilty at a hearing last month to assaulting the woman he met online in January last year.

Almost 12 months later he had left his lover of 20 years, with whom he had fathered four children and moved into his new internet romance's Torquay home.

But Torquay Magistrates Court heard prosecutor Karen Ball explain that on February 21, Humphreys and his new love went to a swinging party in Buckfastleigh and he became aggressive because of the male attention she had received at the party.

Mitigating, Alan Parsons explained Humphreys had seen his partner go upstairs with two women and six men, while he was with another woman at the party in a house.

Miss Ball said: "She went upstairs with the men and women and he became upset with what he saw."

As the couple drove back to the victim's Torquay home the couple argued, arriving at home before midnight.

But before going to sleep, the victim received a text message from one of the women at the party and he asked her to turn the phone off before getting and up and saying he was going out.

The pair started to swear at each other before the violence unfolded.

"He ran at her, running at her with a clenched fist, and hitting her in her left eye. He struck her seven times, causing swelling to her cheek, temple and head," added Miss Ball.

The victim took a taxi to Torbay Hospital to get medical treatment.

Mr Parsons said the text message was the 'straw that broke the camel's back' and that his client had been 'brought into a world he knew no previous experience of', adding that his client had no links to Torquay other than his former partner who he now wanted nothing to do with.

Delivering his sentence, chairman of the bench Sandy Vaughan-Edwards said Humphreys would receive a 12-month community order, with a 12-month supervision requirement, 100 hours of unpaid work and a one-year prohibited activity requirement that stops him from contacting her in any form.

He was also ordered to pay her £150 compensation costs with the first payment of £5 due in four weeks.