A JILTED lover who jumped through his ex-girlfriend's kitchen window armed with a baseball bat to confront her and her new partner is now looking to get his life back on track.
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In September last year Marcus Christopher Edwards, 27, of Silvester Street, Portland, pleaded guilty in the Warrnambool County Court last year to aggravated burglary, damaging property, committing a serious offence on bail and four counts of unlawful assault.
Edwards was jailed for 11 months with about eight months counted as already served due to time he had spent on remand.
In a judicial monitoring hearing this week judge Liz Gaynor said it appeared that Edwards was now going all right on his corrections order, but she emphasised there needed to be a focus on addressing his drug addiction.
He is booked in to start the Sliding Doors non-residential drug rehabilitation program this week.
Judge Gaynor said that in the past 12 months she had been concerned the Office Of Corrections was not particularly focusing on helping offenders address specific drug issues.
She said drug addiction was central and fundamental to Edwards' offending and she wanted him to be offered intense treatment to address those issues.
The judge said that in the past year she had seen a number of drug users fall off the wagon while on community corrections orders.
Edwards said he did not want to go back to jail, which was a key motivation in reducing his drug use with the aim of completely giving it up.
He admitted using once in the past week.
Judge Gaynor also ordered random drug tests be conducted and adjourned further judicial monitoring until April 23.
After his stint in jail, Edwards started a three-year community corrections order with conditions he do 250 hours of community work, drug tests and offender programs including an anger management course.
Judge Gaynor said in sentencing that Edwards had a vicious ice addiction as well as daily cannabis and poker machine habits.
She said after a family member’s death that Edwards plunged into ice use, which led the the breakdown of a relationship.
Edwards said drugs, grief and depression got on top of him and he lost the plot.
Judge Gaynor said Edwards’ offending behaviour had been appalling and courts were expected to act with severity in relation to home invasions and domestic violence.
Crown prosecutor Nicholas Batten said that on January 12 last year Edwards tried to contact a woman at about 9.45am and was told by someone she had been with another man, which made him upset.
He grabbed a baseball bat and went to the woman's house.
She was asleep in the lounge room with the other man and when Edwards knocked on her front door she refused to let him in.
Edwards went to the backyard, looked through a kitchen window, saw the other man's shoes, got angry and climbed through the unlocked kitchen window.
He walked into the lounge room and started swinging the baseball bat at the man, striking him once to the left forearm.
Edwards chased the man around the house before the woman let the victim flee out a glass sliding door.
Edwards argued with the woman, abused her, smashed the glass door and then struck the woman to the top of her right thigh before leaving.
When interviewed by police, Edwards admitted he entered the woman's home with the intention of assaulting the man and scaring the woman.
Edwards said he started using ice when he was 23 years old and "really hit it hard in the last three years".
Edwards has significant prior offending and was jailed for one month in 2011 but the judge indicated the crimes before her were a “big leap”.