A “violent and controlling bully” who broke his partner’s neck, leaving her paralysed and her life “destroyed”, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison. Robert Easom, a landscape gardener, violently assaulted Trudi Burgess, a schoolteacher and former singer, when she threatened to leave him after enduring eight years of coercive, controlling behaviour.
A court heard that Easom, 57, pinned Burgess down in a rage and pushed her head into her body until her neck snapped. He denied a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent but was found guilty after 27 minutes of deliberation by a jury at Preston crown court in November. He had admitted causing the injury but denied intending to cause her serious harm.
Burgess suffered a complete spinal cord injury and is now tetraplegic. She will never walk again, requires continuous care, is in constant pain, cannot cough without help, has no use of her hands and no control over her bladder and bowel functions. Burgess, 57, of Chorley, Lancashire, is still in hospital in a spinal injuries rehabilitation unit, but attended Easom’s sentencing hearing in person to deliver her victim impact statement.
She said her life had been destroyed by Easom, who had a “true Jekyll and Hyde personality”. “I have been emotionally shattered,” she said. “I suffer from bouts of depression, daily anxiety, symptoms of PTSD, flashbacks and nightmares that wake me up. I feel trapped and powerless. Everything that once gave me joy, now feels out of reach. My future has been rewritten and not by choice.”
The court heard that Easom engaged in a relentless campaign of coercive and controlling behaviour, regularly verbally abusing Burgess and, at times, physically assaulting her. He would berate her, saying she was “a fucking teacher bitch”. Sarah Magill, prosecuting, told the hearing that one minute Burgess would feel loved by Easom, “the next he would hurt her, humiliate her and make her feel small”. Burgess said she was too ashamed to let her family know what was happening but she documented the abuse in the notes section of her phone.
Jailing Easom, of Chipping, Lancashire, Judge Altham, the recorder of Preston, said no sentence could “begin to equal the harm you caused”. He said Easom would be eligible for parole after 16 years. The court also heard victim impact statements delivered in person by Burgess’s grownup children, Gina and Jackson, who set up a GoFundMe page for the huge, life-changing costs the family face in the future.
