A WOMAN whose former boyfriend was banned from contacting her after he assaulted her has failed in her bid to get the order lifted.

Karen Wright, who had a two year on/off relationship with 49-year-old John Millwood, told a judge at Ipswich Crown Court that she wanted to speak to her former partner if she bumped into him in the street without worrying about him being arrested and sent back to prison.

However, Judge John Devaux refused to lift a restraining order banning Millwood from contacting Mrs Wright saying: “It is well recognised that victims of offences don’t always see where their best interests lie.”

He said that Millwood had 72 previous convictions.

“At no time has he shown he has any intention of giving up crime,” said the judge.

Millwood was jailed for 20 weeks last summer for battery on Mrs Wright and was also made the subject of a restraining order banning him from getting in touch with her.

On his release from prison Millwood breached the order by talking to her in the street, visiting her flat and phoning her and in March he was jailed for 97 days after admitting the breaches and obstructing a policeman.

Millwood, of The Mill, College Street, Ipswich, was also made the subject of an indefinite restraining order banning him from contacting Mrs Wright.

However on July 5 a police officer at the Olympic Torch relay ceremony in Christchurch Park saw Millwood with Miss Wright.

At one stage Miss Wright had put her arm round Millwood’s shoulder and he was seen giving her a piggy-back.

When police subsequently went to arrest him, they found him hiding in her wardrobe naked.

Millwood admitted breaching the restraining order and last month was jailed for nine weeks, less 33 days he had already spent in custody.

Yesterday Mrs Wright apologised to the court for playing a part in the breaches of the restraining order and said she was anxious not to waste the time of the police and the courts in the future.

She accepted that Millwood could be “unpredictable” but said she wanted to remain friends with him and to be able to talk to him if she bumped him into the street without him being arrested.