Cleveland policeman Thomas Gair denies abuse of pregnant partner

Thomas Gair, 31, subjected his girlfriend also a serving police officer, to a catalogue of assaults and humiliation throughout their three year relationship, jurors heard.

She was knocked unconscious and needed hospital treatment after he shoved her down the steps in their home having earlier said he wanted her to have an abortion.

Durham Crown Court heard Gair also ran over her in his car, mocked her weight calling her a "f***ing whale," isolated her from her friends and forced her to eat until she was sick.

Her ordeal only ended after both she and Gair joined the Cleveland police force in 2021 as newly recruited constables and her fellow trainees began to notice that she was in fear of the way he treated her.

His behaviour towards her happened before they joined the force, but continued while both were serving officers, it is alleged.

Gair denies controlling and coercive behaviour, five counts of assault and one of stalking between 2019, when their relationship began after meeting on Tinder, and 2022 when it came to an end.

The couple shared a house in Norton, Teesside, but even after leaving Gair continued to monitor who was coming and going via the CCTV, changing the password so that she could not access it.

She gave evidence via a tearful video interview with a specially trained officer from her own force, which was played to the court.

She told the detective: "When I fell pregnant he told me to have an abortion or he was going to leave me. he said we couldn't afford it and it would ruin our lives.

"He told me I would be a crap mother and I was probably going to lose the baby.

"I was really ill when I was pregnant, I was backwards and forwards to the hospital, but he offered me no help or support, he wanted me to have a miscarriage.

"He would poke and jab me in the stomach and he would threaten 'I will put you down the stairs.'"

On May 31, 2020, he carried out his threat, it is alleged.

She said: "I was going upstairs to the top floor of our house and he was coming down. He began shouting and screaming in my face and he pushed me back and I fell right down the stairs backwards and hit my head twice.

"I was knocked out and he was panicking when I came round. I was taken
to hospital by ambulance and needed a CT scan."

The baby was eventually delivered safely but only after a difficult pregnancy in which she was often sick.

She said that whilst ill she would often not feel like eating but Gair would force her to until she was sick.

She also needed daily injections to counter a blood clot that developed on her lung, which Gair was told to give her as she had a fear of needles.

The victim told the court he would sometimes withhold the injections or "come at me really fast with the needle to scare me."

Earlier in their relationship, in January 2020, he had picked her up from a nightclub and pushed her out of the car when they reached their home, leaving the passenger door open.

She fell but as she got up he reversed sharply, striking her with the door.

The victim told the officer: "I was knocked flying and I fell,I think it was the side of my head I landed on and I was knocked unconscious. I don't know how long I was out."

She told the court that Gair mocked her weight and tried to control everything she did, including what they watched on TV, pulling her hair and hitting her with the remote when he wanted the channel changed.

He told her she was fat, would poke her stomach to make it wobble and urged her to throw herself in front of a car, she claimed.

His abuse continued after the pair joined the police force within weeks of each other in 2021, the court heard.

But it proved to be the factor that broke the chain of abuse, the court was told.

Prosecutor Ian West said: "When she joined the police force she got into a cohort of other trainee police officers and they began to socialise together.

"It was in the context of social evenings that they began to notice how she talked about Thomas Gair and saw and heard the messages she received from him.

"Colleagues began to try to press her to report what was happening to the police but she did not want to break up the family.

"One friend then took matters out of her hands and reported him to a confidential police hotline and from there the balloon went up."

When Gair was arrested by his own colleagues he chose not to comment in interview.

She made further assault claims that he bit her on the arm and grabbed her by the neck, pinning her to a wall in a continuing  series of domestic assaults and controlling behaviour.

He went through her phone, she claimed, deleting contacts and pictures that he did not like and left her seeing her closest friend only four or five times a year.

The court heard that Gair joined Cleveland Police in September 2021 and the victim joined two months later in November.

She said: "I thought maybe when he got into the police he would sort himself out but I was just kidding myself."

She said one of the most serious attacks on her happened in December 2021, four months after Gair became a constable.

In interview she told how that day he had pushed her face into baby sick and rubbed it into her hair.

Then as they lay in bed he began strangling her.

She said: "It was the worst of all the times he strangled me. I thought I was going to pass out, everything was going tunnel vision and afterwards I couldn't stop being sick.

"It bruised the blood vessels inside my eyes and there were black dots on my eyelids where it looked like small blood vessels had broken.

"His grip around my neck had been so tight I could not even gasp."

He also threatened to create an Only Fans account in her name using intimate images he had on his phone.

She said: "He sent a blank Only Fans page with my name on it and I thought he was going to post pictures of me on there.

"He has pictures and I think he will do anything to shame me now because he has nothing to lose."

The victim told of another incident where she cowered in their bathroom as he screamed threats to kill her.

She said: "I heard the kitchen drawer go and heard him take something out. He came back and scraped it across the bathroom door. I don't know whether it was a knife but that's what he wanted me to think.

"I thought I was going to die, I remember thinking I would be one of those people you see on TV who was killed by their partner."

The court was told Gair would spit at her, pinch the skin on her arms, throw objects at her, drag her by the hair, push her over and smother her with bedroom pillows while she screamed for him to stop.

Even during police interview she said she felt bad that he would be fired from the police force.

She said: "I feel guilty that Tom is going to lose his job and everything has changed."

Gair, of Middlesbrough, denies all charges and the trial, expected to last four days, continues.