Reveller attacked mum in front of little girl
TERRIFIED VICTIM HAD TO SHIELD SIX-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER FROM ASSAULT
A MUM who battered an innocent mother as she shielded her terrified sixyear-old daughter during a street brawl has been spared jail – after she persuaded a judge that her own children needed her at home.
Paige Hoyle, 25, had been drunkenly fighting with her boyfriend and father when she attacked the mum and daughter as they walked home from a family New Year party.
The victim, Victoria Wynn, huddled with her sobbing child and asked for them both to be let past – but Hoyle, herself a mum-of-three, said ‘who the ‘f*** are you?’ – and subjected her to a vicious beating.
The incident happened at 1.15am on January 1 last year in Rochdale.
Miss Wynn, who in her 30s, was grabbed by the hair and punched in the face up to five times as her terrified young daughter looked on in tears.
She only managed to get away and scoop up the youngster after landing a single punch on Hoyle in self defence.
The mum was later treated for nerve damage and swelling to her face.
She said in a statement: “My daughter is deeply affected and is undergoing trauma counselling after what happened. She has suffered panic attacks at school since the incident.
“I myself am not confident enough to go to the shops now on my own and I am too scared to leave the house.
“There has been a loss of confidence and I’ve suffered a lot of pain and have been taking painkillers.
“This incident had affected us financially too. I have since left work and am in receipt of statutory sick pay.’’
At Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court, Hoyle from Newhey, Rochdale, faced up to five years jail after she admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm but argued her own children aged six, four and nine months ‘depended on her’ and claimed it was ‘not in the public interest’ to send her to prison. She was sentenced to a 12-month community order and ordered to pay £300 compensation.
Hoyle’s father Graham, 54, was arrested over the assault upon Miss Wynn but was cleared of wrongdoing at an earlier hearing.
Harriet Johnson, defending Hoyle, said: “She does show unusual insight into the impact this will have on the woman and child. She has three children aged six, four and nine months of her own who depend on her.
“However, they will not in any way get her out of jail. She has made arrangements in respect of them and she knows custody is inevitable. She doesn’t seem to rely on the children to keep her out of prison. She knows she must be punished for what she has done and she reacted wrongly.”
Sentencing, Judge Mr Recorder Matthew Corbett-Jones described the attack as a ‘sustained and repeated assault,’ that would have been ‘terrifying’ for the victim’s daughter to witness.
“You had consumed alcohol and there is an ongoing impact,” he said.
“This took place in the presence of a child. You started this incident and had it not been for your actions, this simply would not have happened.”