Lawrence Barilli (pictured) was jailed for 27 months after he throttled two women during attacks and threatened them with violence
A man who was cleared of raping women ‘because he has sexsomnia’ has been found guilty of assaulting them in a ‘compendium of utter cruelty’.
Lawrence Barilli, 35, was jailed for 27 months after he throttled two women during attacks and threatened them with violence.
One woman had told a court that he had pounced on her while she was asleep in bed and said he told her he had a condition that ‘makes him do that’.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Barilli was acquitted of raping the victims, but was then found guilty of separate charges of assaulting them.
Judge Craig Scott QC told him: ‘You were convicted of charges which involved insidious, comprehensive and sustained physical and mental abuse over two periods covering three years in total.’
One woman had told the court that it was hard to point to a day when there was no violence and she had lived in ‘a constant state of despair and fear’.
The second woman had described ‘a catalogue of physical and emotional abuse’ and said the impact of Barilli’s behaviour meant that she still suffered from nightmares.
The judge pointed out that Barilli had quite properly been characterised as a bully.
Barilli, of Clydebank, had assaulted his first teenage victim at houses in Greenock and Gourock, in Renfrewshire, between October 2008 and August 2010.
She was grabbed by the hair, punched, kicked and pinned against a wall as well as having her neck compressed.
The woman said burly Barilli would get angry at the ‘smallest of things’ and she was subjected to name calling such as ‘slut’ and ‘scum’.
Barilli attacked the second woman, aged 35, between September 2011 and October the following year at houses in Uddingston, in Lanarkshire, and Shettleston, in Glasgow, and at an Edinburgh hotel after meeting her through a dating website.
She was kicked and grabbed by the hair and had her neck squeezed. She was also thrown onto a couch and pinned to a bed.
Defence counsel Tony Graham QC said: ‘He accepts the manner I described his behaviour in my address to the jury as utterly disgusting.’
The High Court in Edinburgh (pictured) heard that Barilli was acquitted of raping the victims, but was then found guilty of separate charges of assaulting them