A MAN who beat up a 16-year-old girl as he drove through York city centre has been jailed for more than four years.

Abudi Salhab, 24, had already filmed himself carrying out a “degrading and humiliating” sexual assault on the girl, Judge Simon Hickey told York Crown Court.

In the early hours of June 13, 2018, shortly before he got into the car, Salhab had also attacked a man in the street for no reason, the judge said.

Robert Stevenson, prosecuting, had earlier told a jury Salhab had threatened to kill the teenager during the car journey.

She had curled up in a ball in the car’s footwell as Salhab repeatedly hit her head and face.

Salhab’s car had swerved back and forth across the road.

Sentencing Salhab, Judge Hickey said: “She was punched so much, her eye immediately closed.

“You then pulled out clumps of her hair. That was to be particularly degrading for a woman. It hasn’t even grown back now.”

By good fortune, two young men saw what Salhab was doing and when the victim was “ejected from the car” had got her to a place of safety behind a church before ringing the emergency services.

Salhab, of Brinkworth Terrace, off Hull Road, York, denied causing actual bodily harm, sexual assault and affray, but was convicted of all three charges after a trial.

He then admitted a charge of drink driving during the car assault.

He was jailed for four years and three months, put on the sex offenders’ register for life, barred from working with vulnerable or young people, and banned from driving for 49 months.

The jury acquitted him of three further assaults which he had also denied.

Defence barrister James Heyworth said: “It is a spectacular fall from grace for this relatively young man.

“The greatest loss for him is going to be the loss of his character and loss of his ability to follow his career.”

Salhab had been training to be a pharmacist when he was convicted.

During his trial, Salhab had claimed the victim had been injured in an accident which had damaged his car’s steering. He also claimed she had argued with him and had grabbed the steering wheel during the journey.

He claimed the people in the sex video were not him and the victim, and that he had been provoked in the street.

After the verdict he wrote a letter to the judge which Mr Heyworth said apologised for “the hurt and pain he has caused”.

However, Salhab didn’t accept his guilt in the letter.

In three victim personal statements, the teenager said she was still seeing a psychiatrist regularly, was having counselling, couldn’t sleep properly and suffered from anxiety.