A TEENAGER who believed his partner was having an affair went berserk and whipped her on the arms with a laptop cable.

The weals on the 18-year-old woman’s left arm were so severe she had to be checked at Royal Bolton Hospital for possible fractures.

Asylum seeker Petit Nswale pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman at her home in Little Hulton.

He was sentenced to carry out 120 hours unpaid work and pay £60 compensation.

The court warned him: “You could have gone to prison. It was a sustained and totally unacceptable assault”.

Prosecutor Humayun Khan told Manchester Magistrates’ Court Nswale had attacked his girlfriend after seeing texts on her mobile phone from another man.

Mr Khan said: “During a row he whipped her because he claimed she wouldn’t tell the truth and apologise to him.”

Tom Stephenson, defending, said Nswale was an asylum seeker from the Congo and had been in this country five years.

Seeing the text heightened his suspicion that his partner was cheating on him, the court heard.

Mr Stephenson added: “It might seem like some kind of a ritual whipping but it was caused through arguing. She slapped him across the face and he acted on the spur of the moment.

"He is very ashamed.”

The woman is said to want the relationship to continue.

Nswale, aged 19, of Stretford Road, Stretford, was also given 12 months supervision.