Caution: This story contains graphic material that may be disturbing to readers

A B.C. man who bit off his girlfriend's nose in a jealous, drunken rage has been convicted of aggravated sexual assault.

Rodolfo Gonzalez-Hernandez had only been with the woman, who cannot be identified and is referred to as Ms. K in court documents, for a little more than a week when he became enraged at her suggestion he talk to one of her male friends over the phone on Nov. 8, 2009.

"Something seemed to snap in Mr. Gonzalez-Hernandez and he poured a beer over her head," B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Humphries wrote in a decision Wednesday.

Both had been drinking at his Burnaby apartment. Ms. K told the court she had a shower to clean off the beer, changed her clothes and then started kissing Gonzalez-Hernandez. But she said he became aggressive, held her down and started gripping her nose with his teeth.

Eventually, she was able to use her legs to push him off, but he punched her in the face and shredded her shirt.

"Then all she remembers is blood spurting from her face. She reached down to get a shirt to cover her nose. She passed out and woke up in the hospital.

"She was not aware her nose was missing until she was told about it in the hospital," Humphries wrote.

During Gonzalez-Hernandez's trial, the courtroom was shown pictures of Ms. K's severed nose. A tiny, heart-shaped piercing was visible in one nostril.

Gonzalez-Hernandez sent Ms. K an apology email last year, saying they were both victims of too much booze.

He told the court that he was not accustomed to drinking as much as he did on that night, and said he bit her "little nose" as part of their usual foreplay.

"I was going to have sex and all that, so when I went in I start biting her," he testified through a translator.

"I would always do, I would go and all of a sudden I would start biting her you know, prior to just have intercourse."

He explained that on this particular occasion, he was insensible from drink and "just went too hard on it."

When he saw the blood, he called 911.

Gonzalez-Hernandez denied punching his girlfriend in the face, but said that he hit her in the face with his penis, which has a marble implanted in it, during a bout of rough sex.

The paramedics who took Ms. K to hospital said they discovered her lying on the bed, naked from the waist down. She had two black eyes and her nose was gone.

Blood was splashed across the bed, on the floor and on a bedroom cabinet.

With help from the police, the paramedics found the missing nose and brought it with them in the ambulance.

A doctor reattached the nose, but after a week it mummified and had to be removed.

"Ms. K went six months with no nose, wearing a bandage over her face. Her children, who live with their father, were frightened of her and she did not see them for months," Humphries said.

Since then, Ms. K has had seven surgeries to replace the missing nose, and the judge described her current appearance as "quite attractive."

Humphries ruled that the attack was a "violation of her sexual integrity," because it took place "during a sexual episode which she was resisting audibly and loudly, being held down on the bed, hit in the face more than once, with Mr. Gonzalez-Hernandez putting his mouth over her nose, and finally biting it off."

The judge also said the bruises on Ms. K's face and body suggested she had been punched.

"These injuries required force, not a smack with a penis, even one with a marble imbedded in it, or a simple slap," Humphries wrote.

The next scheduled court appearance for Gonzalez-Hernandez is on April 7 to fix a date for sentencing. The maximum sentence for aggravated sexual assault is life in prison.