Victim Personal Statement

The following was written on the 28th June 2016 and was intended to be read out in court, should Paul Stewart have been found guilty of assault by beating, which I believe he would have been had he not duped magistrates into believing that charging him was an "abuse of process":

After having taken my own car key out of the ignition, the man who attacked me, whether by holding my own car key in his hand or throwing it from point-blank distance, caused a nasty cut to my nose. As PC Reid commented to me later on after this man had driven off and I was sitting in her car, nursing my wound, the injury looked “gruesome”. The paramedics who treated me said that I could either go to hospital to have a stitch or two or have steristripes placed over the wound. The fact that I was offered the possibility of having stitches put in illustrates that this was no minor cut.

My nose was extremely sore for a few days after and mildly sore for a further week after that.

I have been left with a small scar on my nose, which not only can I see of course, but I can feel too. Every single time I touch my nose, for example when I wash my face, I feel the bump. It is horrible to feel. All this because the man who assaulted me couldn’t bring himself to be a little bit patient while I looked round for a parking space.

The whole incident caused me an enormous amount of stress. He beeped at me for no good reason, he then acted in an intimidating way while brushing against me in my car doorway, he then assaulted me, he then denied to my face what he had just done, despite the fact that he would have been able to see the cut and blood, and finally he raced off in his car, refusing to wait for the police to turn up (which they did after only about three minutes).

In addition to all of the immediate stress caused, along with the pain coming from the cut, was the extra stress caused by the fact that I had to call my parents, at 9pm the day before Christmas Eve, to tell them that the car key had gone missing, despite myself and several police officers thoroughly searching my car, or rather, my parents car. This resulted in my Dad having to drive to London from Dorset on Christmas Eve in a five-hour roundtrip for him, which is something that not a single person in the criminal justice system has acknowledged. This caused an enormous amount of stress for both me and my parents.

Due to the fact that the car key could not be found – again, despite several police officers thoroughly searching my car – I had to abandon my car in that car park and walk home that night, which took about 50 minutes. Incredibly, I was not able to sleep at all that night, due to the stress I was feeling, and when I drove down to my parents house in the evening on Christmas Eve, I was so tired I almost fell asleep at the wheel numerous times. All this because this man removed my car key from the ignition and it could not then be found.

Due to me worrying about this type of incident ever happening again, I now always lock the door as soon as I get in the car.