Serial domestic abuse offender back behind bars after breaching ban on seeing ex-partner

Kevin McIver was out on licence from a prison sentence — imposed after he threatened to murder the woman — when he used her mobile phone to call police regarding an 'unrelated matter'.

Quick-thinking officers redialled the number moments after he'd hung up, and it was his former girlfriend who answered.

Prosecutor Lindy Scaife told Greenock Sheriff Court: "She couldn't speak at the time because the accused was still with her, awaiting the arrival of a taxi.

"He was later traced and cautioned and charged, to which he replied, 'It's been her asking me to come down and paint'."

McIver was jailed last November after bursting into the woman's home in Port Glasgow and cornering her in a bedroom.

He had made a beeline for her up a flight of stairs after kicking in the front door.

Moments earlier he'd hurled a bottle at her window and shouted: "I'm gonnae kill ye."

McIver had also referred to her family as a 'manky mob'.

Defence lawyer Gerry Keenan said his client had gone to a new home that the woman had just moved in to because she 'required some decorating to be done'.

Mr Keenan told the court: "This matter was brought to the attention of the police not because the complainer objected to Mr McIver being in her company, but because he made the initial phone call himself.

"He referenced in that call to the police a deterioration in his mental health.

"Mr McIver knows the terms of the non-harassment order but he has experienced a sense of isolation."

McIver, of Dougliehill Terrace in Port Glasgow, had been made subject to the order last November.

The court was told at that time that his record for domestic offences went back 30 years, including for assault.

Sheriff Andrew McIntyre remarked: "If the court does not take this matter seriously people will think that these things [non-harassment orders] can simply be switched on and off."

Interjecting from the dock, McIver pleaded to be spared prison.

He said: "Your honour, I'd stay on a curfew 24/7 — I'm feart I'll lose my flat and my wee cat."

Sheriff McIntyre told him: "I'm afraid your record for breaching court orders is just too bad to deal with this in any way other than prison.

"The court can't turn a blind eye to the breaching of orders which are put in place for the protection of victims of crime.

"You've not even finished your prison sentence for the case for which the non-harassment order was imposed."

The sheriff returned McIver to prison for the unexpired one-month portion of his previous sentence and gave him a further four months behind bars for the breach offence.