A HEROIN addict who slashed his ex-lover across the face was given a five-year jail sentence yesterday.

Ben Matthews, aged 24, from Corporation Road, Newport, denied wounding Kelly Caufield with intent to cause actually bodily harm. But the jury of five women and seven men at Cardiff crown court decided unanimously that Matthews had carried out the attack on February 3.

Matthews had claimed that his ex-girlfriend, 23-year-old Kelly Caufield, of Maindee in Newport, had cut herself and invented the story of the attack to "get at" him.

On Wednesday the court heard the emotional testimony of Ms Caufield, who had wanted to withdraw her evidence against her former lover.

After the verdict, defence barrister Suzanne Thomas told the court that the injuries Ms Caufield had received were minor. Ms Thomas said that Matthews had a serious drug problem that had led to his offending, and that he was attempting to tackle it through drug treatment programmes like Kaleidoscope.

Ms Thomas also pointed out that although Matthews had a string of convictions for burglary and other property crime, this was his first violent offence.

In sentencing Matthews, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall, QC, said that it was particularly unpleasant that as well as attacking Ms Caufield he had sought to "drag her character through the mud".

Judge Durham Hall told Matthews: "That young mother was bathing her son when you burst in, punched her in the face and deliberately slashed her across the face and arm with a weapon. Having received five wounds to her face and 19 to her arm she was in grave distress and peril."

As the judge was speaking Matthews shook his head in apparent disbelief, to which the judge responded: "Sadly, I can see that your remorse remains nil. To put it bluntly, you burst into a woman's home and repeatedly slashed her across the face in front of her son."