A "cold hearted, violent domestic perpetrator" subjected his girlfried to four weeks that would have "felt like an eternity", a court has heard.

Steven Gorst, aged 33, subjected his Bolton partner to repeated terrifying instances of threatening and coercive behaviour, including repeatedly threatening to kill her, over the course of their 26-day relationship.

Bolton Crown Court heard how on May 18 this year he pulled his partner out of their bed by her leg saying that refusing his attempts to initiate sex made him feel emasculated.

Jennifer Devass-Tamakloe, prosecuting, said: “He told her, you don’t understand what I’m capable of.”

Ms Devass-Tamakloe told the court how the pair’s relationship had started through a mutual friend but was characterised by violent threats on Gorst’s part and by controlling and coercive behvaiour.

She explained how the victim had wanted to end her relationship with Gorst, of Bracken House, Manchester, who has 22 previous convictions for 45 offences but felt too afraid to do so.

At one point, when she told him she did not want to be with him anymore he climbed in through the window of her home in Bolton.

He told her “you’re going to die, you’re driving to my mate’s who’s got a gun.”

Ms Devass-Tamakloe also detailed how Gorst had made his partner buy him £600 worth of clothes from JD Sports out of a £7,000 refund for a car which he felt he had won for her on May 23 and on June 6 he again became aggressive and threatened to kill her.

On June 8, Gorst then came to his partner’s house 5am asking for a cigarette and when she let him inside he told her “you don’t understand who you are messing with, I will end you and get away with it.”

His reign of abuse and violence only came to an end on June after he was arrested when his victim took her phone into the bathroom and called the police after he entered her home yet again and told her “you don’t understand what I’m capable of, I could smash your head in the wall".

Gorst was interviewed by the police on June 13 and eventually pleaded guilty to assault and engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour on the first day of his trial at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court on August 8.

A statement from his victim, read by Ms Devass-Tamakloe said: “Since meeting Steven my whole life has changed.”

She added: “I am scared he is going to turn up at my house with a gun because he had made promises to run through my house with a strap.”

The statement described Gorst as a "cold hearted, violent domestic perpetrator".

Daimian Mullarkey, defending, argued that Gorst understood he “has issues in dealing with relationships” and that he needed assistance and that the injuries he had inflicted on his victim had been relatively minor.

But Judge Eliot Knopf pointed out that though the relationship was brief it “would have seemed like an eternity to the complainant".

He said: “It would have been a terrifying nightmare and one can recognise from her descriptions that it would indeed have been a traumatic experience for this young woman.”

Addressing Gorst, Judge Knopf added: “You could not take no for an answer and continued to exploit her.”

He sentenced Gorst to 23 months in prison and hit him with a restraining order forbidding him from approaching on contacting his victim for five years.