Gregory James Coulson pleads guilty to choking, assault on pregnant partner

A violent father who choked his pregnant partner before dragging her around by her hair has walked free from jail.

A domestic violence offender, who once slapped a nine-month old girl because she wouldn’t stop crying, beat a man with a fence paling causing a collapsed lung and attacked his pregnant partner during an argument over tobacco will not spend any more time in jail.

The Mackay father of three “pinned her down to the bed, held his hand over her mouth and nose for five seconds so she couldn’t breath” about 10am on July 13, 2021 at their home, a court heard.

“She cried out, you’re killing me, and scratched at him to try and free herself,” Crown legal officer Hariet Hall-Pearce said as Gregory James Coulson looked on via video link from jail.

“(He) grabbed her by the hair, sat her up and pulled her and the way in which he pulled her caused her to knock her hip on the bed frame and she sustained scattered bruising.”

Coulson then dragged her to the bathroom and held a towel over her face, which affected her breathing.

The court heard a temporary protection order had been in place for just more than a month before the attack.

He was arrested, refused bail and spent 384 days in presentence custody.

Ms Hall-Pearce said while in custody on remand Coulson called his victim and his mother several times “to try and get (her) to withdraw or change her statements”.

The calls were recorded. He suggested she “just say you were intoxicated, I’ll get out and everything will be dropped”.

She has since given birth to their child.

Coulson pleaded guilty to choking, assault causing bodily harm, attempting to pervert the course of justice, giving false or misleading information as a prisoner and breaching a domestic violence order.

Now 31, Coulson has a five-page criminal history littered with entries of violence including in 2014 when he pleaded guilty to assault for slapping a nine-month old child across the face causing bruising to her face, legs and bottom.

The court heard in 2016 he pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm after he, while drunk, took a fence paling and beat a man with his causing a collapsed lung.

Defence barrister Scott McLennan described the latest offending as “unusual examples” of choking arguing they were “less serious than the typical hands around the throat choking”.

“It wasn’t that my client was trying to exert dominance over the (woman) by suffocating her,” Mr McLennan said.

“It’s more a panicked reaction to her yelling in circumstances where they had neighbours living in adjacent units who’d called the police.”

Mr McLennan argued the second choking incident was “fleeting” and more like a “push to the face with a towel in his hand”.

The court heard Coulson had been working while in custody.

He had a dysfunctional childhood, was exposed to domestic violence at home and abused at boarding school.

Judge Tony Moynihan accepted the woman had suffered “substantially” from the assault but accepted his early plea, co-operation and that he had been productive in jail.

Coulson was jailed for three years with immediate parole release because of time already served. Convictions were recorded.