Cessnock prison guard Samuel Berry guilty of assaults on two women

A Cessnock Correctional Centre prison guard who dated two women at the same time, has been found guilty of choking one and threatening to break the fingers of another.

Samuel Berry was found guilty of assaulting and intimidating two ex-girlfriends.

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A Cessnock Correctional Centre senior prison guard who dated two women at the same time during 2018 has been found guilty of choking one and threatening to break the fingers of the other

Samuel Leigh Berry, 29, was released on bail on Thursday after he was found guilty of intentionally choking, assaulting and intimidating one woman; and assaulting and intimidating a different woman.

The women had been unknown to one another at the time of the assaults and had connected via Facebook where they first revealed details of Berry’s assaults.

Magistrate Elizabeth Ellis handed down her decision in Wyong Local Court, with findings that revealed on December 6, 2018, Mr Berry choked one girlfriend after an argument about sex.

“He grabbed on to my neck and started choking me,” the woman said in her evidence. “He just kept choking me. I said, ‘I can’t breathe’.”

He replied, “if you are talking, you are breathing”.

The women lost vision and when he let go, she didn’t get her vision back for five minutes. The court heard Mr Berry also threatened to slit her throat if he caught her lying or cheating on him.

“I seriously thought he was going to kill me,” the woman said in a text message exchange afterwards.

On another occasion he put the woman in a wrist lock and refused to let go.

Between July and September last year, the court heard Berry threatened a different girlfriend and told her he would break her fingers if he found out she was lying.

“He told me that if I ever lied he was going to break my fingers,” the woman said. “I said to him, ‘Are you joking?’ and he said, ‘Do I look like I’m joking’.”

He told the same woman that he had found her ex-boyfriend in the prison where he worked and indicated he had assaulted the man.

“Hospital escort!!!!!!!!!!” he wrote in an email.

The bashing never happened however Magistrate Ellis considered it a form of intimidation.

Magistrate Ellis said she must consider a jail term for the serious offences, and Mr Berry’s solicitor Ben Hoffman said his client would be a “vulnerable person in custody” due to his time as a corrective services officer. He suggested home detention.

Mr Berry was accompanied by his current girlfriend and family in court, while the victims and some of their close friends and family were also present. He was granted conditional bail until his sentencing on March 25.