A WEST Cumbrian teenager has admitted subjecting his former girlfriend to controlling behaviour and twice assaulting her, causing unpleasant facial injuries.

The controlling behaviour exhibited by 19-year-old Sol Wedgewood-Paterson went on for more than two years and included him installing a tracking app on her mobile phone, Carlisle Crown Court heard.

During the most serious assault he inflicted on the same victim, the woman suffered facial bone fractures. During a brief hearing, Wedgewood-Paterson, of Grange Avenue, Flimby, entered guilty pleas to five allegations.

As well as the coercive and controlling behaviour charge, the defendant admitted a wounding offence and an actual bodily harm assault and two counts causing criminal damage – to a window and to a mobile phone.

His former partner was the victim of both assaults, with the wounding offence committed on July 30, 2022, in Workington. 

The actual bodily harm assault happened on August 14, 2020.

The charge relating to the defendant’s controlling and coercive behaviour states that the offending happened between June of 2020 and July 30, 2022, the day he committed the more serious assault.

It included him repeatedly "belittling" and verbally abusing the victim, assaulting her and causing injuries, threatening the woman’s family and installing a tracking device on her phone.

The defendant’s behaviour seriously distressed the victim, the court heard.

Judge Nicholas Barker referred to the defendant’s former partner suffering un-displaced fractures though further details were not disclosed.

The defendant’s defence lawyer Sean Harkin said that the defendant should be the subject of a Probation Service background report before he is sentenced.

Mr Harkin said the defence would also commission a psychological report on Wedgewood-Paterson.

Judge Barker asked the prosecution to obtain a victim personal statement in advance of the sentence hearing, which he set for March 1.

In the meantime, the defendant was granted bail condition that he has no contact with the victim and that he remains outside of an exclusion zone agreed at an earlier hearing.

Standing in the dock with his hands in his pockets, the teenager spoke only to confirm his personal details and to enter his pleas. He denied an allegation of causing the victim grievous bodily harm with intend to do so.

The prosecution accepted his admission of the alternative and less serious wounding charge.