NEW YORK, USA (CMC) — A Guyanese man here who burned his girlfriend's face with a hot iron while their three children watched has been sentenced to 13 years in jail.

Before handing down the sentence on Eric Persaud, 36, Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory Lasak, described the gruesome attack as horrendous and sick.

"Your actions are some of the worst I've seen a man do to a woman," the judge told Persaud, scolding him for forcing the unidentified woman to turn up the heat on the iron so he could permanently scar her for calling the cops over an earlier attack.

"The actions that you took on that day were horrendous and sick," he added. Before his sentence, Persaud apologised to his Guyanese-born girlfriend and urged her to be a good mother to their young children.

"My actions were cowardly, and there was no excuse for losing my cool," Persaud told the court.

Prosecutors said Persaud flew into a rage on April 30, 2009, because he was upset that his girlfriend called 911 a week before when he smashed her phone and computer. He promised to kill her if she called the cops again.

When the woman refused to burn herself with the iron, Persaud stuck a towel in her mouth and burned her on both cheeks while forcing her to turn up the heat, prosecutors said.

When that wasn't enough, he slashed her in the face with a razor blade, prosecutors said. The woman spent 11 days in the hospital.

Persaud called the woman hundreds of times from Rikers Island Correctional Facility in Queens, begging her not to testify against him.

Prosecutors said they retrieved recordings of the phone calls and planned to use them against Persaud if he'd gone to trial.

Persaud pleaded guilty to an assault charge last month.