A CO Antrim man who struck his nine-year-old son so hard that he fell back and smashed a sink with his head, has been jailed for seven months.
Brian Joseph McAllister (35), an electrician of Gortnagory Road, Carnlough, admitted a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Jailing the defendant at Ballymena Magistrates Court, District Judge Peter King described the incident as "reprehensible" .
The court heard that the boy jad been hit "five times" on the side of the head and although he was not knocked out "bits of the sink" had to be picked out of his hair.
The boy had to get stitches to a head wound and the the judge said a medic listed bruises on his forehead, near his eye, cheek, shoulder, chest, elbow, thigh and shin.
McAllister, who had 18 previous convictions including assaults, was freed on his own bail of £500 pending appeal.
A prosecutor said the boy and his brother had been staying the weekend with their father who is separated from their mother.
The prosecutor said the boy's mother said the child told her: "Daddy hit me 'slap, slap, slap'" causing his head to hit off a sink pedestal which then broke.
The boy was interviewed and told police he had been hit about ten times in the house and was told to go out and clean the back garden.
McAllister told police the boy had disobeyed him by going to his granny's and that he pushed him up the stairs and asked him to stack wood "as punishment".
He claimed he "smacked" the child twice on the shoulder and that the boy fell back on a slippery wet vinyl floor and hit his head on a sink pedestal.
A lawyer for McAllister said he "bitterly regrets" what he did and has had no contact with his sons since the incident which he said was a "one-off".
