A FORMER army mental health nurse has been struck off after he “strangled and throttled” his girlfriend.

Captain James Banks, who worked at The Queen Elizabeth Memorial Health Centre in Tidworth, read messages on his sleeping partner’s phone before subjecting her to a prolonged attack.

On September 24, 2016, Banks poured water over her as she slept.

The judge said: “you wished you had boiled the kettle”.

He then punched her and “busted her nose” and hit her so hard that he knocked her dental braces out of her mouth.

During the attack Banks also pulled out clumps of the victim’s hair and spat in her face.

Banks was convicted at Warwick Crown Court on May 27, 2017, for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and jailed for 16 months after pleading guilty on the day his trial was due to start.

The judge said: “I regard this as a particularly nasty and serious offence of its kind.

“I regard you as particularly culpable because you were in a position of power and control over your victim, and because as a senior officer in the army and a psychiatric nurse, you should have known better. But you abused those positions. That breach of trust, and abuse of power, make you particularly to blame.”

Following the attack the victim tried to take her own life and now suffers from flashbacks and nightmares.

The mental health nurse, who was assigned to the Department of Community Mental Health in the Wessex region, was hauled before the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) on January 26 following his conviction.

In a report of the hearing Tania Dosoruth, counsel for the NMC, said Banks had accepted that he had “brought the reputation of the nursing profession into disrepute”.

She added that Banks agreed that his conduct had been “far from easily remediable” and “so egregious” that he was “not fit to practise at all”.

The 35-year-old, who did not attend the hearing, said that his behaviour was “incompatible” with him continuing in the field.

Banks has since decided to pursue a career outside of nursing and is studying a masters degree in International Human Rights Law and Practice at the University of York.

However, Banks has the right to appeal his dismissal within the next 18 months.