A CONTROLLING boyfriend who slammed his girlfriend's face into a chair and a wall, breaking her cheekbone in four places, was jailed for two years today.

A jury convicted Sameer Ismail, 31, of causing Toni Pearce grievous bodily harm at Salisbury Crown Court in November.

Today judge Keith Cutler said the appalling, horrific injury, had been "viciously inflicted" and was "a permanent, lifelong reminder of what happened".

Prosecutor Paul Fairley said the pair had been visiting Ms Pearce's family in Estcourt Road, Salisbury, on August 15 last year after she had moved in with Ismail in his hometown of Leicester.

But he had stormed out of a family meal in Wetherspoons after an argument about the afterlife, accusing Ms Pearce's family of racism.

When Ms Pearce later refused to drive him home to the Midlands he told her "you will do as I say" before grabbing her by the head and smashing her face into a wooden arm of the chair and then against the wall.

Ms Pearce's mother heard an "almighty crash" and her daughter screaming.

She raced upstairs to find Ms Pearce on the floor, crying and bloody.  Ms Pearce, who needed a titanium plate in her cheek, said her face now ached when out in the cold and she was frightened of hurting it again.

"I just want to look the way I used to look before I was attacked," she said.

David Freeland, for Ismail, said it was an isolated incident; a "terrible mistake" made "in the spur of the moment".

But Judge Cutler said Ismail was still in a "high level of denial" about what he saw as "a great conspiracy".

He said Ismail should have shown immediate remorse, instead of running off and then lying to the police and the jury.

He said: "If he had behaved correctly and properly and honestly and honourably, he wouldn't find himself in this position.  "Now he finds himself convicted of a very serious assault."

The court previously heard Ismail - 17stone, 6ft2, and "very strong" - had become more controlling since the pair had moved in together.

He claimed Ms Pearce had fallen over and hit her face as he opened her bedroom door, and had made up the allegations because he was planning to leave her.

Ismail, of Hurst Rise, Leicester, had not told his new girlfriend about his conviction.