A jealous pimp made his sex worker girlfriend swallow her engagement ring while holding her captive in their Leeds cellar.
Sandu Voicu subjected his then-partner to 'torturous and humiliating' physical abuse after locking her in the cellar on two occasions.
Leeds Crown Court heard he became jealous after one of the woman's clients wanted to leave his wife to start a relationship with her.
The 43-year-old, of Conway Avenue, Harehills, was handed an extended sentence totalling nearly eight years today (Tuesday) after pleading guilty to two counts of false imprisonment, two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate relationship.
He was told he must serve two-thirds of a custodial period of four years and 10 months followed by a three-year extended licence period.
Prosecutor Alex Menary said the Romanian couple had been in a long-standing relationship and she started working as a sex worker in Sweden to pay off around €30,000 worth of debts they had in Romania.
The victim said Voicu became aggressive with her in Sweden and the couple later reconciled, but when he returned to Romania he assaulted her then they moved to Denmark together where she continued doing sex work.
She said Voicu has convictions for acting as her pimp in Denmark and Sweden.
The victim told police she did not enjoy being a sex worker but she was terrified of Voicu, he had assaulted her brother and he had a history of making threats to kill her or members of her family if she ever left.
Voicu promised to stop abusing her and making her work as a sex worker but after the couple moved to Leeds around the summer of 2020 the victim got back into sex work.
Mr Menary said a local man arranged for her to advertise her services online through a website and Voicu, who did not speak any English, managed her bookings and the arrangements.
After work dried up due to the coronavirus pandemic, Voicu told her she could no longer chose her clients.
Around this time, they also started arguing over one of her clients, who was frequently visiting her, sending her messages and giving her money to pay off their debts.
Voicu's behaviour changed and he began demanding she make more money, including by no longer using protection for certain types of sex and doing other types of sex. On one occasion, she insisted a client wore a condom and Voicu beat her afterwards. The court was told he would assault her every three or four days by slapping, kicking and beating her.
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Near the end of September that year, the couple argued about the same client again and Voicu told the victim to go into their cellar with him.
He locked the door behind them and kept the house key in his pocket it.
She was detained for a number of hours, during which she was handcuffed and restrained for a short period of time, the court was told.
Voicu threatened to cut her eyes out or nose off and told her she had a choice before passing her a bigger knife and telling her to do it herself.
She refused to do it and begged: "Beat me or do something else but not this."
He beat her around the head with the handle of the knife and cut her hair off.
The victim, thinking she was going to die, begged to see their daughter one last time. The defendant made her video call their daughter to show her what he had done to her.
He then beat her even harder and used the knife to cut her ankles in what she said was an attempt to cut her tendons to prevent her from running away.
Several days later, he arranged for two clients to visit her and have unprotected sex with her but she refused and he used her phone to try to arrange for her to have sex with '100 men until she was falling down'.
Again, he locked her in the cellar for hours, during which time he smashed up her engagement ring and made her swallow it.
He took her clothes off her, made her stand outside naked, threw water over her and left her outside for some time after telling her: "When you'll tell the truth, I'll let you inside."
At one point, he brought her back inside to beat her before taking her back outside to beat her.
Shortly before 8am on the morning of September 30, she managed to escape and ran into the street wearing nothing but a bra.
She was shouting for police to be called and a member of the public did so.
Voicu followed her out of the house and ran down the street looking for her.
He found her hiding behind a low wall, wrestled her to the ground and dragged her back to the house.
Members of the public went to help her and when police arrived she said Voicu would kill her if he was allowed back to their house.
When he was being arrested, he shouted at her in Romanian: "Say that we quarrelled out of jealousy. Do you hear? Please. Do this for me and I forgive you completely. Do this for me."
Voicu has previous convictions for rape and battery.
Charles Blatchford, mitigating, said his client recently had surgery on his chest and is believed to have cancer.
He asked the judge to keep a custodial sentence as short as possible after giving his client some credit for his guilty pleas and taking his health issues into consideration.
Mr Blatchford also said his client wants to serve his sentence in Romania, but Judge Christopher Batty replied: "It will be entirely a matter for the prison authorities where he serves his sentence."
The court was told Voicu had told a probation officer he had committed the offences because he was upset.
Sentencing, the judge told the defendant: "It was in fact torturous and degrading conduct designed to humiliate her and it was only ever a way of punishing her and trying to re-establish the control you had lost. When you felt this had not worked, you did it again some nights later."
He added: "The CCTV footage of her running through the streets utterly terrified gives the clearest indication of the impact of your conduct on her.
"If it had not been for a public-spirited member of the public who contacted police goodness knows how this may have ended."
Voicu appeared in court via a video link from Armley jail and was assisted by an interpreter during the sentencing hearing.
