Joey Barton to face new trial over allegation of assaulting wife

Joey Barton faces a new criminal trial over an allegation he assaulted his wife, judges at the High Court have ruled after proceedings against him were previously paused.

The former footballer was accused of assaulting Georgia Barton in a drunken row – which he denied – and was due to face trial at a magistrates’ court in 2022.

However, the case was adjourned after Mrs Barton sent a letter to prosecutors retracting her allegations.

A judge then ordered that proceedings be paused over concerns a trial would be unfair to Mr Barton after prosecutors said they did not plan to ask Mrs Barton to give evidence in court.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, appealed against the decision at the High Court in London, with barristers claiming at a hearing last month that a fair trial could go ahead.

In a judgment on Friday, two senior judges ruled in the DPP’s favour and said Mr Barton should face a trial over the allegations in front of a different judge.

In a 20-page ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp said the previous judge’s decision “was wrong in principle”.

Mr Barton was accused of grabbing his wife by the throat and kicking her in the head during a row outside their home in Kew, south-west London, where they had been with two other couples in June 2021.

He denied a charge of assault by beating after he was arrested by police at his home, with Mrs Barton said to have been left with a golf ball-sized bruise on her forehead and a bleeding nose.

But Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court heard in March 2022 that Mrs Barton wrote to prosecutors a month before the scheduled trial to claim she was injured accidentally when friends intervened in an argument between the pair, having both drunk “four or five bottles of wine”.