Mother is cleared of assaulting daughter

A RELIGIOUS widow accused of assaulting her 14-year-old daughter was yesterday cleared of subjecting her to a four-hour ordeal of punches, kicks and beatings with a shoe.

The prosecution had alleged at Southwark Crown Court that the 38-year-old woman, of Holborn, central London, had gone too far in disciplining her daughter for being late home.

The mother of four children denied ever hitting any of them. It took a jury of six men and six women an hour to find her not guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, on 9 April this year.

She told the jury that that bruising found by doctors was caused by the girl staying out late with friends and being beaten up by boys whom the girls had refused to go out with. On the morning of her daughter's complaint to police, they had argued about school uniform, the mother said.

When arrested, she said she was worried that her daughter was mixing with 'undesirable characters'. The girl had been warned by police about shoplifting, and she (the mother) had warned her to move away from friends that were a bad influence.

'I told her that we were a Christian family and she should not do that,' she told police officers. 'I read the Bible to my children and try to correct them quietly - I do not hit them.'