Brute who pretended to be ‘Prince Charming’ broke his fiancée’s ribs and dragged her by her hair in terrifying string of attacks before LAUGHING at her in court – as young mother lays bare her horrific injuries

A violent brute who portrayed himself as ‘Prince Charming’ broke his fiancée’s ribs and dragged her by her hair in a terrifying campaign of domestic violence before laughing at her in court.

Jamie Thomas, 30, was sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday for inflicting a ‘prolonged and persistent assault’ against his ex-partner Laura Williams.

Horrific injury pictures reveal the extent of Thomas’ sick abuse which was carried out to an ‘appalling extent’, Cardiff Crown Court heard.

Ms Williams said that she was left ‘shaking’ in court as she faced Thomas, who she says was mocking her right until he was sentenced and escorted down from the docks.

‘He’s a narcissist through and through,’ she said. ‘He will never change. When he was in the dock he was laughing at me. And when he got sent down he was laughing at me. That to me is ‘I’m not finished with you, just wait till I get out’.

‘I was just thinking ‘no you have to be strong. He’s controlled you for the best part of your life, you have to do this, he needs to know what he’s done’.

‘I was shaking. I looked at him and he looked at me and I just started crying. I just thought ‘you’ve done all this, you’ve put me through all this’.’

Despite having a history of violence against romantic partners, Ms Williams said that Thomas made himself out to be ‘Prince Charming’ and a ‘good guy’ when they first got together in 2018. 

And although she was warned by others about his sick history of domestic abuse, the thug managed to convince her that he had changed his ways.  

But within just eight months, he became jealous and violent, threatening to kill himself if she thought about leaving him and manipulated her into staying with him. 

The cruel early signs of control spiralled into a violent campaign of abuse which saw her partner drag her by her hair, bite her and break her ribs. 

He screamed at her in the street that he would ‘f*** you [her] up every time I see you’ and posted intimate and private details about her online. 

Ms Williams said that his defence barristers portrayed him as a ‘good man’ and she wants ‘people to know what type of a person he is’.

Detailing how the four-and-a-half-year relationship started, Ms Williams, from Ely in Cardiff, said that it started well but in hindsight she can see it soon got abusive. 

She said: ‘It was still very much abusive on his part but it was more controlling at first. It was the odd names here and there and then it was things like when he didn’t get his own way he was going to kill himself.

‘That’s why I kept going back because he said he was going to kill himself if I didn’t. It is emotionally abuse. At the start he would portray himself as the good guy, prince charming.’

In his sentencing, the court heard Thomas had previous convictions of domestic violence but Laura was taken in by his lies, and due to how he was treating her believed would change.

She said: ‘I was aware of it [his past] but was thinking ‘oh no he’ll change, he’s with me now, he’ll change’. ‘I don’t do drugs, I’m very anti-drugs I thought he’d change, he’d come off the drugs. That didn’t happen. I had it all, was told he ‘didn’t do this, didn’t do that’ – turns out he did.’

During his sentencing hearing his lawyers said in mitigation that his drug use contributed to his abuse.

Ms Williams said: ‘It was probably around eight months into the relationship that I first started noticing things. I’d watch him go from really nice and calm to really angry straight away. His mood would switch at the drop of a hat.. It was like walking on eggshells constantly.

‘It was mainly when we were together but sometimes he would do it around his kids or my kids but mainly when it was just us. When he was around his friends he still portrayed he was the best boyfriend ever.’

Thomas has two children and Ms Williams has three, but they did not have any together. Although the relationship had started to go significantly downhill, the pair still got engaged in 2019.

Ms Williams explained: ‘We had an engagement party, I thought this was the love of my life. I remember thinking ‘he’s proposed, he’s going to come off the drugs, change’. The night of the engagement party, in some of the photos we look happy – I look so happy. He came off the drugs for seven weeks before the engagement party then went straight back on them.’

Over the next two years, the relationship went significantly downhill, with the pair separating in October 2022. However, Ms Williams said his constant harassment and suicide threats made her get back together with him temporarily in January 2023. It was three weeks later that the first violent incident happened.

As she was undressing, Thomas kept making sexually violent comments about what he wanted to do to her, before trying to act on them.

Upon rejecting his violent advances, Thomas bit her left breast and laughed when she told him to get off. 

She retreated to the corner of the room, and he ended up falling asleep that night. But in the morning, after seeing that a large bruise had formed, he did not make an apology. 

Embarrassed, she did not seek medical attention. The injury has since left a heavy scar. 

Just two months later, after she went to his home in Ely, Cardiff, he menacingly told Ms Williams that she ‘was his’ despite the fact that they had broken up at this point, adding that he ‘didn’t want to see her with anyone else.’ 

After she fell asleep in his living room, she woke up to Thomas ‘smashing’ her phone after seeing messages from other man. 

He then started ‘ragging’ her off the sofa, before violently grabbing her hair. 

He then dragged her into the hallway, and hurled insults at her, calling her ‘fat’, ‘ugly’ and a ‘slag’.

Thomas told her that she was ‘f***ing with [his] head’ as she tried to run upstairs and escape. But she was pulled back down, and he punched her twice in the ribs. 

She cried ‘you’ve hurt me’, but he did not apologise. 

It was only after she escaped that he apologised via text, telling her he ‘loved her.’

But she was in ‘excruciating pain’ and could not raise her arm. An X-Ray revealed he had broken two of her ribs. 

Just a week later, as the pair were out celebrating his birthday, he ‘gripped her hair’ and slapped her across the face causing it to redden and an ear piercing to start bleeding. 

He also pushed her down onto the floor, despite knowing she had broken ribs. 

Ms Williams eventually decided to formally report the abuse to the police after being supported by Women’s Aid when she received treatment for her ribs, and an incident in which he followed her when she was in the car with one of her children.

‘He chased me in the car with my little boy in the car. And I thought I have to go to the police, I can’t put my kids through this. I think he knew he was losing his grip on me. I told him in the end I’d rung the police and he was saying ‘they should lock me up I deserve it.’

‘It started with Women’s Aid when I was in hospital with my ribs. I told them I fell down the stairs and they called me in. From there the police said I needed to report it. It went from there. Overall it took five hours to go through it all.’ 

Thomas was sentenced to three years and three months imprisonment for a count of assault by beating. He was also sentenced to 18 months to run concurrently for assault by occasioning actual bodily harm for the incident in which he bit her breast, and two months to also run concurrently for the instance where he slapped her.

He was sentenced to two one month sentences for malicious communication and for criminal damage. He will have to serve half of his total sentence in custody before he will be released on licence. He was also made the subject of a 10-year restraining order.

Despite being jailed, Ms Williams says she has been mentally affected for life by the relationship and is still being treated for her physical injuries. 

She said: ‘It’s still hanging over me. It was meant to go to trial so until this week I’ve been preparing, doing pre-trial, so it’s all been over me and I wasn’t allowed to mention anything that happened.

‘It’s a lot to keep to yourself and now I want to scream from the rooftops. He’s done it before and he’s done it again. He doesn’t know how to treat a woman. I do worry because he had restraining orders against his ex and he didn’t comply with them at all. He thinks he’s above the law, he doesn’t care about any of that.

‘I’m dreading it [his release], absolutely dreading it. He has a vendetta against me and I know he is going to be thinking I ruined his life so he’s going to ruin mine. I was happy with three years but he’s only got to do half so he will be out and I just think he could have got a lot more for what he did to my breast alone.’

Ms Williams says she has been left with emotional scars and struggles to trust men after the abuse. ‘I have panic attacks regularly, I’ve been referred for PTSD, my mental health is just way off the radar, it’s bad.

‘I won’t trust again. I used to say to him, ‘you’re the love of my life, I’ve loved you more than any of my ex-partners’ and now he’s done that how am I ever going to trust another man, what if they batter me too? I’m really sceptical of men.

‘I’ve got a lot of healing and processing to do. I don’t think it has sunk in yet. The mental health team have told me I have developed dissassociation which means I was talking about it as if it was nothing. There were no emotions nothing. When it was in court I actually cried.’

Judge Crowther in her sentencing acknowledged that mistakes had been made in bringing the case to court and Ms Williams thinks this can put people off. However, she wants to encourage anyone going through the same as her to report it if they feel they have the support to do so.

‘I do still feel like there were a lot of mistakes done by the police,’ Ms Williams said. ‘They need definitely more training. Both barristers said there has been a lot of mistakes in this case.

‘I think more awareness needs to be brought about domestic violence. I think a lot of women don’t come forward and speak up because they are scared of their abusers. I think as long as you have got the right support in place before you go to the police you’ve got more people behind you.’