Hartlepool woman locked up by court after flouting restraining order against aunt she attacked

Abbey Sherry, 33, broke a restraining order by behaving in a threatening manner to the victim when she came across her aunt in the street by chance in August last year.

Just 10 weeks earlier Sherry received a suspended 15-month prison sentence and two-year restraining order for actual bodily harm when she attacked her aunt by biting and kicking her in the face.

On August 15 last year Sherry, of Pine Grove, Hartlepool, saw her aunt in a car with two younger relatives in Raby Road.

Nigel Soppitt, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court, described how she started shouting, screaming and pointing to the woman and was “puffing her chest out thought to be in a fairly threatening manner”.

The woman felt anxious and panicked as a result, and lived in fear of Sherry, the court heard.

She was found guilty of breaching the restraining order in her absence after a trial in the magistrates court.

Sentenced at the crown court on Tuesday, a judge imposed eight months of the previously suspended sentence plus another two months for breaching the restraining order.

Stephen Constantine, mitigating, said it had been a “chance meeting” rather than Sherry deliberately trying to contact her aunt.

He added she has made some steps towards turning her life around.

Recorder Ayesha Smart accepted Sherry saw her aunt by chance but added: “You then went on to deliberately breach that restraining order by acting in a threatening manner in front of your children and in front of her child.”