Prison guard convicted of choking, threatening ex-girlfriends

The victim of a prison guard convicted of choking one girlfriend until she couldn't breathe or see and threatening to break another's fingers was left with PTSD and has suffered panic attacks following the abuse.

The 32-year-old woman told the Herald she was "broken" by Samuel Leigh Berry, who was convicted at Wyong Local Court on Thursday of five charges relating to the abuse of two concurrent girlfriends.

Convicted of intimidating girlfriends: Samuel Leigh Berry.

"It's a relief," she said after magistrate Elizabeth Ellis convicted Berry, a senior prison guard at Cessnock jail and volunteer firefighter.

She said she couldn't handle being alone and suffered increasingly frequent panic attacks.

Before his convictions, Corrective Services suspended Berry with pay for 14 months. Having been found guilty on Thursday, he is now suspended without pay. It is understood that Corrective Services will move to terminate his employment.

Berry threatened to slit the first girlfriend's throat when he asked her if she had cheated on him during an argument about having sex in December 2017.

"You'd better not be f---ing lying to me," he said.

"I seriously thought he was going to kill me ...  I’m not talking about choking in the bedroom," the woman, who met him at work, said in a text message that was tendered in court.

"I was so scared and the only way to calm him down was to give in to his request and have sex with him," another tendered text message read.

On another occasion, Berry put the woman into a wrist lock that he learnt as a prison guard. Holding her in the move designed to subdue inmates, he asked again about her seeing other people.

"You’re not going until I know, you'd better not be lying ... The harder you resist, the harder it will hurt you," he said.

He was found guilty in Wyong Local Court on Thursday of intentionally choking the woman, intimidating her and assaulting her.

He  was also found guilty of assaulting and intimidating the other girlfriend.

In July last year, he squeezed four of her fingers and threatened to break them. The woman gave evidence to the court on a previous occasion, saying, "He did tell me if I ever lied to him or cheated on him, he would break all of my fingers."

"I'm not joking", he told her.

On another occasion, Berry told her he had bashed an inmate "in a fit of rage" after "listening to inmate phone calls".

Knowing the woman's former boyfriend was imprisoned, Berry told her that he had "freaked out" and thought he had heard an inmate speaking to her on the phone, then bashed him.

"Hospital escort!!!!!!!!!" he wrote in an email to his then-girlfriend.

That the bashing had not occurred was irrelevant, magistrate Elizabeth Ellis found in convicting Berry of intimidation.

Berry was supported by his current girlfriend and extended family as he was convicted on five charges pertaining to violence and intimidation of the ex-girlfriends.

His solicitor Ben Hoffman told the court that being a former corrective officer, his client would be vulnerable behind bars if given a prison sentence.

He was granted conditional bail before his sentencing at the same court on March 25.