A man convicted of violently assaulting a woman in her flat – including strangling her, slamming her into a doorframe, and holding a knife to her stomach – has lost a bid to challenge his conviction and sentence.
The Court of Appeal dismissed all aspects of Andrew Scott Page’s appeal against a unanimous jury verdict and a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed in 2024 for grave and criminal assault.
He also failed in his application to introduce fresh evidence or challenge several aspects of the trial process.
Page, who represented himself, had been convicted following a four-day trial in the Royal Court. The jury heard that he had attacked a vulnerable woman with whom he had previously been in a relationship during an argument.
According to the appeal judgment, the complainant alleged that Page had become increasingly aggressive after taking a large number of tablets, leading to a violent confrontation in which she was kicked, thrown around the room and strangled.
She also said he tried to gouge her eyes, held a knife to her stomach, and placed all his weight on her – causing her to struggle to breathe.
Medical evidence from a police doctor supported her account.
Key evidence also came from a series of texts the complainant sent Page shortly after the attack but before police were involved. In one, she wrote: “Its ok to grab me and strangle me 3 times to the point where I couldn’t breath & felt like I was Gona pass out! Plus throwing me around and over my furniture yeah. Trying to slam my head off the wall/door frame.”
Another read: “You’ve fukd me up Andrew badly (may not of smacked me in the face as such but u tried gouging my eyes out and all the rest) do u even realise ur own strength!”
Page did not challenge or deny the messages at the time, replying just after midnight on 22 December 2022: “I hope Ur feeling a bit better, sorry on my part the last thing I wanted was for us to have a set to… I’m sorry for getting upset, I really mean that.”
He was later arrested after attending police headquarters to request a prescription reference number, during which officers noticed blood on his clothing.
In his defence, Page claimed he had been assaulted by the complainant and acted only in self-defence. He argued that the complainant was dishonest and emotionally unstable, and that the injuries she sustained were either self-inflicted or accidental.
The Court of Appeal acknowledged that the complainant had given “notably vague and contradictory” evidence on some matters and that parts of her wider account were “open to serious criticism”. However, it found that none of this undermined the core allegation.
“The jury were well aware of the significant discrepancies… It was addressed on the basis that her evidence was at best selective and in some cases, demonstrably wrong,” the court said.
“We do not consider that the jury were required to dismiss the Complainant’s account because of peripheral inconsistencies or even outright lies as to the surrounding circumstances.”
The court added that the timing of and detail in the complainant’s messages “provided compelling contemporaneous evidence of an assault”.
Page raised several procedural complaints, including the admission of bad character evidence, the use of an edited police interview, and the late amendment of the indictment to widen the charge dates. All were dismissed.
On the bad character point, the court noted that the judge had “effectively defused” any unfairness and had allowed Page “significant leeway” during trial, including presenting evidence of his good character.
Regarding the amendment of the charge dates, the judgment found it was “not only legitimate but appropriate” given the complainant’s memory difficulties.
Page also failed in his attempt to introduce new evidence, including phone records, CCTV, and a defence witness report.
The court found none met the legal tests for fresh evidence and said: “No amount of peripheral error or even deliberate evasion and lies about circumstantial matters was necessarily determinative of the central question… whether there was an assault carried out… and if so, who assaulted whom.”
In conclusion, the Court of Appeal – comprising Ms Clare Montgomery KC, sitting with Sir William Bailhache KC, and Mr Michael Furness KC – decided not to allow an appeal and refused Page’s bid to admit fresh evidence.
Page’s original sentence of four years and six months, plus an additional two months for an unrelated larceny charge, will remain in place.