Smirk of knife attacker ‘too clever to jail’

Fury as Oxford student is allowed to walk free

SMIRKING with relief, a posh university student walked free from court as campaign groups slammed the decision not to jail her. Lavinia Woodward, 24, was dubbed too clever to go to prison despite admitting that she knifed her boyfriend during a frenzied attack.

The wannabe heart surgeon lunged at her Tinder lover Thomas Fairclough, 25, a science student, with a bread knife before stabbing him in the leg. She then hurled a laptop, a glass and a jam jar at him, during a drink and drug-fuelled clash at Christ Church college, Oxford. Woodward, a drug addict, pleaded guilty in May to the vicious attack last year – but Judge Ian Pringle lavished praise on her and said her actions were a “one-off ”. He informed her then she was unlikely to go to prison and delayed sentencing while ordering her to stay drug-free. Yesterday, at Oxford crown court, she was handed a 10-month sentence, which was suspended for 18 months.

But Mark Brooks, of the Mankind Initiative which assists male victims of domestic abuse, said: “Our concern is the message this sentence gives is that a male victim of domestic abuse is not treated as seriously as a female victim rightly is.”

John Azah, of the Kingston Race and Inequalities Council, said: “If she was not a white, middle-class Oxford University-educated woman, she may well have been jailed.”

The court heard Woodward, who it was said had lived a “very troubled” life, would not return to her studies but would live with her mother in Italy.