Alcoholic Mark Riley, 45, popped the question to Sally Richardson while locking her in a room and battering her, a court heard.
A man who beat up his girlfriend as he proposed to her was jailed today for almost four years.
Alcoholic Mark Riley once attacked his partner so badly her eye swelled up to the size of a golf ball.
The 45-year-old also popped the question to Sally Richardson while locking her in a room and battering her, Liverpool crown court heard.
Judge David Aubrey QC said: “What on earth can possess a man to repeatedly punch a person and in effect propose matrimony to his victim?”
Riley’s worst attack on Ms Richardson happened in February when he fractured her eye socket with his fists, leaving behind injuries so bad that a doctor was convinced he had been armed with a knuckleduster.
Riley, who has a previous conviction for beating up his sister and headbutting a former girlfriend, pleaded guilty to common assault and grievous bodily harm.
Ken Heckle, defending, said: “Alcohol played a massive part in this.
“He doesn’t understand how he could have committed such a serious offence. He was genuinely shocked when he saw the photograph [of the injuries].
“He kept saying: ‘No one deserves that’.”
Judge Aubrey told Riley, from Fairfield, Merseyside: “You are an abuser of women. Women are entitled to be protected from you.
“You were the perpetrator of extreme, relentless, consistent and persistent violence upon your partner.
“You treated a partner, someone to whom you had proposed to just months prior, a fellow human being, as a punch bag.”
Riley was jailed for 46 months.
