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FORTY-YEAR-OLD Peter Jones tried to gouge his ex-girlfriend's eye then punched her 15-year-old daughter and bit the child's grandad, a court heard.

Jones, who was under licence for a separate assault on another ex-partner, had been drinking when he carried out the attacks on the three victims.

Prosecutor Peter Arnold told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court, the defendant had been living with the woman in Rhyl when they visited the Potteries over the weekend of September 24 to 26, 2010.

He said events had passed smoothly until the last evening when Jones's behaviour became erratic.

He added: "He took himself off to the daughter's bedroom and was found rooting around under the bed.

"When his partner remonstrated with him, he grabbed her face and pulled down, she felt he was trying to gouge her eye out. She put her hand up and he bit it, causing substantial pain."

The woman suffered a swollen and black eye, a cut to the bridge of her nose and a bite mark to the hand.

The court heard the defendant was told to leave and the woman's ex-father-in-law, the granddad of her daughter, offered to give him a lift to the railway station.

Mr Arnold said: "During the journey he was hostile to the others in the car.

"As far as the young girl, he was demanding she look at him. She said she didn't want to, so he punched her to the left side of the face. Her grandfather intervened, he tried to get in between. The defendant grabbed his left hand, started to bite it. When the right hand came into play, that received the same treatment."

The court heard when Jones was arrested he denied the attacks. But he was found guilty of three counts of assault by battery in his absence after he failed to attend a court hearing in February.

He had been under licence for a similar assault for which he received a suspended sentence in August, 2009.

Mitigating for Jones, of Maes Maenefa, Rhyl, solicitor Henry Hills said: "He was convicted in his absence. He accepts that. He does have a criminal record but it's only in the last two years that violence has reared its head.

"Jones's life was dominated by alcohol, he moved from drugs to alcohol. He is now in a personal relationship with a woman who appears committed to him."

Jones was sentenced to serve four months in prison for each of the three counts of assault, to run concurrently, plus an extra month for failing to surrender to magistrates' court. He was also jailed for a further six months for the previous assault which was under a suspended sentence, making a total of 11 months.

Judge Robert Trevor-Jones told him: "You fall to be sentenced for three separate assaults on victims that can each be viewed as vulnerable.

"All of these offences were committed while under a suspended sentence for assault causing actual bodily harm on your then girlfriend – punching and biting her.

"The domestic abuse programme seems to have done you little good."