Social media app founder jailed for attacking ex-partner

The woman feared she would die as Christian Philip Mercer, 39,  twice got her in a choke hold and applied pressure so that she could not breathe, Recorder Taryn Turner said.

As he did so, he told the woman: “You are going to sleep now.”

Then he punched and smacked her. She saw a knife had been moved from the kitchen into her living room and was near some duct tape and a chair that had been moved from the dining area.

“You told her you were going to tie her up,” the judge told Mercer. “How terrifying and frightening that must have been for her.”

The woman was continuing to suffer psychologically from the whole experience, the court heard.

The woman had been for a night out with friends and returned home between 3am and 4am on May 4.

“She let herself into the house and there you were, lurking in the pitch blackness, only making yourself known to her when she closed the door and flicked on the lights,” the judge told Mercer.

He throttled her until she couldn’t breathe, briefly released her and then reapplied the choke hold, the court heard.

“He was applying so much pressure I thought I was gone,” the woman had told a jury, York Crown Court heard.

The judge told Mercer that after leaving the woman’s home he had sent the victim messages that “amply demonstrated your jealous and obsessive nature” and how he had felt humiliated by her telling others their four-year relationship was over.

In a personal statement, the woman told the court Mercer had “changed completely” and “left her in a very dark place”.

Following the attack, he had tried to make her out to be a liar and to destroy her character in an attempt to protect his own image, she said.

The court heard she suffered bruising to her neck and arm and tenderness to her abdomen.

A probation officer warned the judge that there was a risk Mercer would be violent towards any future partner.

Mercer, of Harrogate, who set up an app to help people with HIV, denied intentional strangulation and actual bodily harm, but was convicted by a jury in October.

He was jailed for three years and two months and given a restraining order banning him from contacting the woman or going near her home for 15 years, among other conditions.

The couple had broken up a week before the attack. He had moved out of the home where they lived together and was staying at his office, York Crown Court heard.

Mercer’s barrister Eleanor Mitten said he gave his time to charity generously and was advancing in his career.

He had had anxiety and panic attacks since being remanded in custody following his arrest and was being assessed to see if he had attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. He had also had traumas in his childhood.

She handed in character references that the judge said showed a different side to Mercer.