A FORMER magistrate who hit the headlines when his son murdered his ex-wife fought back tears yesterday when he was acquitted of assault.

It took the jury at Newcastle Crown Court two hours to find Paul Geldart not guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He was accused of slamming a picture frame into his girlfriend Melanie Lumsden's head during a row on August 26, 2002.

After the hearing, he said: "It's been two years of hell. I knew all along I had done nothing wrong and I'm just pleased it's all over."

Mr Geldart, 46, met Miss Lumsden, 28, when he was assigned to support her as a domestic violence counsellor by Darlington Women's Refuge. Their relationship became intimate but they later split up.

On the day of the alleged incident, Mr Geldart thought they were getting back together, but trouble flared when he saw Miss Lumsden with another man. He believed she was cheating on him and confronted her.

Although Mr Geldart, a former borough councillor, admitted throwing the picture frame to the ground, he said he never meant to hurt Miss Lumsden.

The court heard that Miss Lumsden had previously fabricated evidence to frame another man for assault and had reported 109 incidents to police, only one of which led to a conviction.

Outside court, Mr Geldart, of Hercules Street, Darlington, said: "I will never help anyone again. You're trying to help someone and care for them and then they kick you in the teeth. Never again."

Mr Geldart is well known in the Darlington area, having been an outspoken JP in the 1990s who called for murderers to be hanged.

In 1998, his son, Simon, who was 18, was jailed for murdering his mother, Kathleen, 46. He hit her with a champagne bottle while she slept because she had refused to lend him her car.