HUSBAND, 82, FORGIVES WIFE AFTER SHE HIT HIM OVER THE HEAD WITH HIS OWN WALKING STICK
A wife was told she should be "utterly ashamed" for what happened the night she hit her elderly husband over the head with his walking stick.Those words were from Judge Stuart Rafferty QC as he told 65-year-old Patricia Wileman "justice has to be tempered sometimes with mercy", as he gave her 18 months in prison, suspended for two years.
After being married for 35 years, Nottingham Crown Court heard the couple argued before she assaulted him.
Her husband tried to hit her, so she responded by hitting him with his walking stick, she said.
The judge said: "She was heard in the 999 call to say he'd assaulted her in the past and words to the effect 'this was pay back time'.
He said, 'that wasn't so'." Both the Wileman's had been drinking - but that did not "excuse or forgive what happened", he said.
"You were under an amount of strain over losing a sister and the loss of other close relatives in the recent past," said the judge.
"That doesn't excuse what you did either." "He is older than you by some distance.
He found himself, however it happened, on the floor.
You were to say in the course of the 999 call that you had hit him twice and certainly one of those blows was to the head with his own walking stick." Mrs Wileman pleaded guilty to assault, causing bodily harm, after police attended De Lacy Court, New Ollerton, at the request of the ambulance service dealing with injuries to her 82-year-old husband.
Mrs Wileman, who has been living in Grove Street, Mansfield, had been quite emotionally distressed.
Her two brothers had died, and her sister died suddenly, and she had just been to the funeral, said Miss Campbell.
"Mrs Wileman and her husband rely heavily on each other" and are "both anxious at the prospect of being parted from each other".
It was also revealed that Mr Wileman, who attended court with family members, did not assist police further with their investigations after the 999 call was made.
